January 11, 2019 Momentum Investing, Strategic Allocation
Subscribers have asked whether risk-adjusted returns might work better than raw returns for ranking Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS) assets. In fact, “Alternative Momentum Metrics for SACEMS?” supports belief that Sharpe ratio beats raw returns....
January 10, 2019 Animal Spirits, Individual Investing
A “pump-and-dump” scheme promoter: (1) builds a position in a stock (often a thinly traded penny stock); (2) gooses its price by spreading misleading information; and, (3) liquidates the position once the stock reaches. Who...
January 9, 2019 Fundamental Valuation
Is value of a firm’s patents a reliable predictor of its stock returns? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Patent-to-Market Premium”, Jiaping Qiu, Kevin Tseng and Chao Zhang investigate firm patent-to-market (PTM) ratio (percentage of market value attributable to...
January 8, 2019 Fundamental Valuation, Momentum Investing, Size Effect, Strategic Allocation, Value Premium
Does active stock factor exposure management boost overall portfolio performance? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Optimal Timing and Tilting of Equity Factors”, Hubert Dichtl, Wolfgang Drobetz, Harald Lohre, Carsten Rother and Patrick Vosskamp explore benefits for global stock portfolios...
January 7, 2019 Equity Premium, Momentum Investing
Is stock price momentum an imperfect proxy for sensitivity of individual stocks to past dispersion of returns across stocks (zeta risk, or return dispersion)? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Market Risk and the Momentum...
January 4, 2019 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/31/18 through 1/4/19. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
January 4, 2019 Equity Premium, Fundamental Valuation
Does Cyclically-Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio (CAPE, or P/E10) usefully predict stock portfolio returns? In their October 2017 paper entitled “The Many Colours of CAPE”, Farouk Jivraj and Robert Shiller examine validity and usefulness of CAPE in three ways: (1)...
December 28, 2018 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/24/18 through 12/28/18. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
December 28, 2018 Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
Are there advantages to using leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETF) to implement conventional asset class exposures? In their October 2018 paper entitled “A Portfolio of Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds”, William Trainor, Indudeep Chhachhi and Chris Brown investigate performance of...
December 27, 2018 Bonds, Commodity Futures, Currency Trading, Equity Premium
Should investors rely on aggregate positions of speculators (large non-commercial traders) as indicators of expected futures market returns? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Speculative Pressure”, John Hua Fan, Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Ana-Maria Fuertes and Joëlle Miffre investigate speculative pressure...
December 26, 2018 Investing Expertise, Strategic Allocation
Do non-profit endowments beat the market with their investments? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Investment Returns and Distribution Policies of Non-Profit Endowment Funds”, Sandeep Dahiya and David Yermack estimate investment returns and distribution rates for a...
December 25, 2018 Aesthetic Investments
Are premium toys attractive alternative investments? In their April 2018 paper entitled “LEGO – The Toy of Smart Investors”, Victoria Dobrynskaya and Julia Kishilova study LEGO sets as an alternative investment. A secondary market for these sets with...
December 21, 2018 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/17/18 through 12/21/18. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
December 19, 2018 Equity Options
Does accounting for realistic trading frictions support beliefs that equity index out-of-the money (OTM) put options and at-the-money (ATM) straddles are systematically overpriced? In their October 2018 paper entitled “Index Option Anomalies: How Real Are They?”, Michal...
December 18, 2018 Commodity Futures, Momentum Investing
Do prices of commodity futures contract series reliably exhibit reversal and/or momentum? In their October 2018 paper entitled “Do Momentum and Reversal Strategies Work in Commodity Futures? A Comprehensive Study”, Andrew Urquhart and Hanxiong Zhang investigate the performance...
December 14, 2018 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/10/18 through 12/14/18. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
December 14, 2018 Calendar Effects, Commodity Futures
As a follow-up to “Sunspot Cycle and Stock Market Returns” a reader asked: “Sunspot activity does have a direct relationship to weather. Could one speculate on the agriculture market using the sunspot cycle?” To investigate, we...
December 13, 2018 Calendar Effects, Individual Gurus
A reader asked whether Charles Nenner, self-described as “the talk of Wall Street since accurately predicting some of the biggest moves in the Markets over the past few years,” accurately forecasts equity and commodity markets. We...
December 11, 2018 Calendar Effects
Is there a flip side of cyclic relative weakness to the cyclic relative strength described in “Pervasive 12-Month (and 5-Day) Relative Strength Cycles?”? In their October 2018 paper entitled “Seasonal Reversals in Expected Stock Returns”, Matti...
December 10, 2018 Equity Premium, Volatility Effects
Is there a distinct systematic asset risk, as measured by its market beta, associated with each return measurement interval (frequency, such as daily, monthly or annually)? In other words, is return measurement frequency a risk...
December 7, 2018 Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/3/18 through 12/7/18. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to...
December 7, 2018 Big Ideas
Is it possible that all the 300+ published factors that predict stock returns (such as size, value, profitability, investment, momentum…) derive from data snooping? In his October 2018 paper entitled “The Limits of Data Mining: A...
December 6, 2018 Big Ideas
How should researchers applying machine learning to quantitative finance address the field’s data limitations, which exacerbate data snooping bias? In their October 2018 paper entitled “A Backtesting Protocol in the Era of Machine Learning”, Robert Arnott, Campbell...
December 5, 2018 Investing Expertise
Do employees of financial intermediaries such as brokers, financial analysts and fund managers take advantage of their access to private information? In their March 2018 paper entitled “Personal Trading by Brokers, Analysts, and Fund Managers”, Henk...
December 4, 2018 Momentum Investing
Do exchange-traded funds (ETF) exhibit statistically reliable short-term reversal and intermediate-term momentum? In their October 2018 paper entitled “Momentum Strategies for the ETF-Based Portfolios”, Daniel Nadler and Anatoly Schmidt look for reversal and momentum in next-month performance of...