August 7, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 8/3/20 through 8/7/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
August 7, 2020 Mutual/Hedge Funds
Is the nominal incentive fee charge by hedge funds (typically 20% of profits exceeding a previous high-water mark) representative of the actual aggregate incentive fee paid by fund investors? In the July 2020 revision of...
August 6, 2020 Individual Investing, Investing Expertise
Can individual investors make a living by day trading? In the June 2020 update of their paper entitled “Day Trading for a Living?”, Fernando Chague, Rodrigo De-Losso and Bruno Giovannetti analyze performances of all Brazilian...
August 5, 2020 Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
How should investors evaluate the effectiveness of a safe haven asset? In their July 2020 paper entitled “A Safe Haven Index”, Dirk Baur and Thomas Dimpfl devise and apply a safe haven index (SHI) to...
July 31, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/27/20 through 7/31/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
July 28, 2020 Investing Expertise
Will machine learning revolutionize asset management? In their January 2020 paper entitled “Can Machines ‘Learn’ Finance?”, Ronen Israel, Bryan Kelly and Tobias Moskowitz identify and discuss unique challenges in applying machine learning to asset return...
July 24, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/20/20 through 7/24/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
July 23, 2020 Technical Trading
Is a 10-month simple moving average (SMA10) the best SMA for long-term crossing signals? If not, is there some other optimal SMA lookback interval? To check, we compare performance statistics for SMA crossing signals generated...
July 22, 2020 Big Ideas
Do returns for “smart beta” indexes, constructed to exploit research on one or more factors that predict individual stock returns, reliably predict returns for exchange-traded funds (ETF) introduced to track them? In the June 2020...
July 17, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/13/20 through 7/17/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
July 17, 2020 Fundamental Valuation
A subscriber, citing the weekly record of S&P 500 earnings growth estimates in theĀ “FactSet Earnings Insight” historical series, wondered whether estimate trends/revisions are exploitable. To investigate, we collect S&P 500 quarterly year-over-year earnings growth estimates...
July 16, 2020 Bonds, Equity Premium, Strategic Allocation
How should investors think about the interactions between working years (retirement account contributions) and retirement years (retirement account withdrawals)? In his June 2020 paper entitled “Retirement Planning: From Z to A”, Javier Estrada integrates working...
July 15, 2020 Bonds
Are government bond returns exploitably predictable? In their June 2020 paper entitled “Predicting Bond Returns: 70 Years of International Evidence”, Guido Baltussen, Martin Martens and Olaf Penninga examine predictability of international 10-year government bond returns...
July 14, 2020 Investing Expertise
Can machine learning (ML) algorithms improve stock picking? In the May 2020 version of their paper entitled “Stock Picking with Machine Learning”, Dominik Wolff and Fabian Echterling apply ML to insights from financial research to...
July 13, 2020 Calendar Effects
The Trading Calendar presents cumulative return visualizations for the S&P 500 Index across the calendar year and across each calendar month. Three alternative perspectives on U.S. stock market performance by calendar month are: (1) percentage...
July 10, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/6/20 through 7/10/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
July 9, 2020 Equity Premium
Most stock data sources present Total Return (TR), 100% reinvestment of dividends with no participation in firm rights issuances and share issuances/repurchases, as representative of investment performance. An alternative perspective is Total Return for All...
July 8, 2020 Economic Indicators, Value Premium
Do interest rate effects explain/predict the poor performance of value stocks over the past decade, and especially during 2017 through early 2020? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Value and Interest Rates: Are Rates to...
July 7, 2020 Animal Spirits, Equity Premium
Is investor attraction to high-reward/high-risk (lottery) stocks a crucial contributor to stock return anomalies? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Lottery Preference and Anomalies”, Lei Jiang, Quan Wen, Guofu Zhou and Yifeng Zhu aggregate 16...
July 6, 2020 Big Ideas, Equity Premium
Are published studies that predict higher returns for some U.S. stocks and lower for others based on firm accounting, stock trading and other data reproducible? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Open Source Cross-Sectional Asset...
July 1, 2020 Fundamental Valuation
What are the roles of changes in earnings forecasts and the discount rate on stock valuation during the COVID-19 stock market crash? In the May 2020 update of their paper entitled “Earnings Expectations in the...
June 30, 2020 Strategic Allocation
Does multi-class investing boost performance for sophisticated investors such as educational endowments? In his June 2020 paper entitled “Endowment Performance and the Demise of the Multi-Asset-Class Model”, Richard Ennis examines recent performance of educational endowment...
June 29, 2020 Equity Premium, Momentum Investing, Size Effect, Value Premium
Are widely accepted equity factor exposures available in fact to investors via “smart beta” mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETF)? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Smart Beta Made Smart”, Andreas Johansson, Riccardo Sabbatucci and...
June 26, 2020 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/22/20 through 6/26/20. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
June 26, 2020 Momentum Investing, Technical Trading
Is there a way to mitigate adverse impact of price trajectory turning points (trend changes) on performance of intrinsic (absolute or time series) momentum strategies? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Breaking Bad Trends”, Ashish...