Investing Research Articles

Do trend following strategies widely used by managed futures funds break down during financial crises? In the December 2013 version of their paper entitled “Is This Time Different? Trend Following and Financial Crises”, Mark Hutchinson and John O’Brien examine the effectiveness of trend following strategies as applied to futures contract series during and between financial… Keep Reading

In the introduction to his 2013 book entitled Get Rich Carefully, television personality and former hedge fund manger Jim Cramer describes it as: “…tailored for those who are befuddled about and distrustful of stocks but seek better returns than they’ve gotten from somnambulant managers and underperforming mutual funds. It’s meant for those who think they can profit… Keep Reading

Is there a tractable way to combine momentum investing with Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT)? In their December 2013 paper entitled “Tactical MPT and Momentum: the Modern Asset Allocation (MAA)”, Wouter Keller and Hugo van Putten present a tactical, simplified, long-only version of MPT that applies momentum to estimate future asset returns. Specifically, they: Make MPT tactical by using short historical… Keep Reading

Here is this Friday’s installment of Avoiding Investment Strategy Flame-outs, a short book we are previewing for subscribers. With this post, the book preview is complete. Chapter 9: “Getting Expert Advice (Delegating Strategy Development)” “Section 8-2 examines in detail the attractiveness of a short-term trading strategy offered in the quasi-advisory (“educational”) marketplace. Assessing this strategy entails considerable… Keep Reading

Readers have proposed several hedging/shorting variations for “Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy Performance”, as follows: (1) buy the top and hedge with (short) the bottom sector based on past six-month return; (2) buy the top sector based on past six-month return and hedge it with a matched short position in the S&P 500 Index via… Keep Reading

Do country stock markets exhibit useful aggregate value and size metrics? In his December 2013 paper entitled “Macro Model for Macro Funds”, Adam Zaremba investigates whether macro size and value factors for country stock markets predict country stock index returns. Specifically, he calculates size and value factors at the country level in each of 66… Keep Reading

Is there a simple compromise between easy-to-implement market weights and more diversified equal sector and equal stock weights? In their December 2013 paper entitled “A Simple Diversified Portfolio Strategy”, Bernd Hanke and Garrett Quigley present a stock portfolio construction approach that blends market weights, equal stock weights and equal sector weights. The objectives of the approach… Keep Reading

Here is this Friday’s installment of Avoiding Investment Strategy Flame-outs, a short book we are previewing for subscribers. Chapter previews will continue for one more Friday. Chapter 8: “Two Analysis Regimes” “This chapter steps through two analysis regimes via examples to illustrate avoidance and mitigation of the issues covered in Chapters 1 through 6. The first example… Keep Reading

Are “quality” country stock markets good places to invest? In his December 2013 paper entitled “Quality Investing and the Cross-Section of Country Returns”, Adam Zaremba investigates whether aggregate financial quality determines country stock market performance. Specifically, he uses two-month lagged 12-month data for listed firms to calculate the following eight quality metrics at the country… Keep Reading

Why does the gross profitability stock-screening strategy work? In their December 2013 paper entitled “Factoring Profitability”, Michael Branch, Lisa Goldberg and Ran Leshem explore the drivers of the gross profitability strategy for U.S. stocks. Specifically, they examine the contributions of factors in the conventional Fama-French-Carhart four-factor (FFC4) model of equity returns and the Barra USE4… Keep Reading