Investing Research Articles

Do term structures of commodity futures contract series shift in an exploitably predictable way? In their May 2025 paper entitled “Short-Term Basis Reversal”, Alberto Rossi, Yingguang Zhang and Yandi Zhu examine relationships between the return spread between adjacent (especially first-minus-second) maturity commodity futures contracts and future returns on these contracts. They consider both cross-sectional and… Keep Reading

Is aggregate net U.S. public company stock buyback activity a useful predictor of U.S. stock market return? To investigate, we relate the quarterly FRED Security Repurchase Agreements; Nonfinancial Corporate Business series (buybacks) to quarterly S&P 500 Index (SP500) returns. This FRED series tracks dollar values of aggregate net stock buybacks by nonfinancial corporations. Specifically, we… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/14/25 through 7/18/25. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to your investing needs. Subscribers: To receive these weekly digests via email, click here to sign up for our mailing list.

Is U.S. equity factor return momentum broader and stronger for a short momentum measurement lookback interval than for a long one? In their July 2025 paper entitled “Revisiting Factor Momentum: A One-month Lag Perspective”, Mikael Rönkkö and Joonas Holmi compare U.S. equity factor momentum for 1-month and 12-month lookback intervals. They consider individual factor time… Keep Reading

The four iShares Core Asset Allocation exchange-traded funds (ETF) offer exposures to U.S. stocks, global stocks and bonds semiannually rebalanced to fixed weights, as follows. iShares Core Conservative Allocation (AOK) – 30% stocks and 70% bonds (30-70). iShares Core Moderate Allocation (AOM) – 40% stocks and 60% bonds (40-60). iShares Core Growth Allocation (AOR) –… Keep Reading

Are stock quality strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider six ETFs, all currently available (from oldest to youngest): Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF (SPHQ) – seeks to track performance of S&P 500 stocks with the highest quality scores based on firm return on equity, accruals ratio and financial leverage… Keep Reading

Do S&P 500 earnings growth rates predict S&P 500 Index (SP500) returns? To investigate, we relate actual 12-month SP500 operating earnings growth rate and as-reported earnings growth rate measured quarterly to SP500 quarterly return. We use 12-month earnings growth rates to avoid confounding calendar effects. Actual earnings releases for a quarter occur throughout the next… Keep Reading

To determine whether the stock market is expensive or cheap, some experts use aggregate valuation ratios, either trailing or forward-looking, such as earnings-price ratio (E/P) and dividend yield. Under belief that such ratios are mean-reverting, most imminently due to movement of stock prices, these experts expect high (low) future stock market returns when these ratios… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/7/25 through 7/11/25. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to your investing needs. Subscribers: To receive these weekly digests via email, click here to sign up for our mailing list.

How is the growing use of large language models (LLM) in production of academic papers in finance affecting outputs? In their June 2025 paper entitled “Certainly! Generative AI and its Impact on Academic Writing (in Finance)”, Thomas Walther and Marie Dutordoir investigate how use of LLMs has affected academic writing in finance, with focus on… Keep Reading