Investing Research Articles

Is the level of uncertainty among equity investors, as measured by the dispersion of S&P 500 Index option volume across strike prices, a useful predictor of stock market direction? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Stock Market Ambiguity and the Equity Premium”, Panayiotis Andreou, Anastasios Kagkadis, Paulo Maio and Dennis Philip investigate the ability of… Keep Reading

What factors truly explain movements in the price of gold? In his January 2014 paper entitled “Facts and Fantasies about Gold”, Joachim Klement checks the validity of common explanations for changes in gold price. Specifically, he investigates whether gold price responds to: change in inflation expectation; change in real interest rate; financial crises; changes in currency… Keep Reading

Can investors quickly exploit surprising after-hours firm earnings/revenue announcements by trading after hours? In the January 2014 version of his paper entitled “Slow Price Adjustment to Public News in After-Hours Trading”, Jiasun Li investigates after-hours (4:00 pm to 8:00 pm) responses of stock prices to surprising after-hours quarterly earnings announcements. He defines a positive (negative) surprise as neither revenue nor… Keep Reading

In the preface to his 2014 book entitled Investing with the Trend: A Rules-Based Approach to Money Management, author Greg Morris, Chairman of the Investment Committee and Chief Technical Analyst for Stadion Money Management LLC, states: “This book is a collection of almost 40 years of being involved in the markets, sharing some things I have… Keep Reading

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