How good can factor investing get? In his May 2016 paper entitled “Quantitative Style Investing”, Mike Dickson examines strategies that: Aggregate return forecasting power of four or six theoretically-motivated stock factors (or characteristics) via monthly multivariate regressions....
How hard is it to beat equal weighting in constructing a portfolio of attractive common stocks? In his May 2016 paper entitled “Naive Diversification Isn’t so Naive after All”, Mike Dickson compares performances of 15 portfolio...
...evidence from several tests offers mixed support for a belief that the intermediate-term strength/weakness of "risky" stock indexes relative to a "conservative" index generates reliably profitable trading signals. Strength/weakness of the NASDAQ Composite Index relative...
Are any trading strategy backtest performance statistics predictive of out-of-sample results? In their March 2016 paper entitled “All that Glitters Is Not Gold: Comparing Backtest and Out-of-Sample Performance on a Large Cohort of Trading Algorithms”, Thomas...
How does stock pairs trading performance interact with lagged pair correlation and volatility? In her May 2016 paper entitled “Demystifying Pairs Trading: The Role of Volatility and Correlation”, Stephanie Riedinger investigates how stock pair correlation and...
Does the U.S. stock market volatility risk premium (VRP), measured as the difference between the volatility implied by stock index option prices recent actual index volatility, usefully predict stock market returns? To investigate, we consider a simple VRP specification:...
Subscribers have proposed that asset class momentum effects should accelerate (shorter optimal ranking interval) when markets are in turmoil (bear market/high volatility). “Asset Class Momentum Faster During Bear Markets?” addresses this hypothesis in a multi-class, relative momentum...
Do peaks in the S&P 500 Implied Volatility Index (VIX) signal positive abnormal U.S. stock market returns? If so, can investors exploit these returns? In the May 2016 version of his paper entitled “Abnormal Stock Market...
Do asset price series in general reliably exhibit trends and reversals? In his May 2016 paper entitled “Trend, Mean-Reversion or Random Walk? A Statistical Analysis of Price Behavior in Major Markets”, Theo Athanasiadis tests a wide...
Do simple moving averages (SMA) commonly used to identify stock market bull and bear regimes work similarly for the spot gold market? To investigate, we consider two market regime indicators: the 200-day SMA and a...
Is there an objective way to benchmark the performance of trend-following Managed Futures hedge funds? In their March 2016 paper entitled “Adaptive Time Series Momentum – Benchmark for Trend-Following Funds”, Peter Erdos and Gert Elaut test a futures...
Do smart beta indexes efficiently exploit factor premiums? In his April 2016 paper entitled “Factor Investing with Smart Beta Indices”, David Blitz investigates how well smart beta indexes, which deviate from the capitalization-weighted market per mechanical rules,...
How should investors think about stock factor investing? In his April 2016 paper entitled “The Siren Song of Factor Timing”, Clifford Asness summarizes his current beliefs on exploiting stock factor premiums. He defines factors as ways to...
Can individual investors practically implement mean-variance optimization in a multi-asset class context? In their April 2016 paper entitled “Asset Allocation: A Recommendation for Resolving the Collision between Theory and Practice”, Larry Prather, James McCown and Ron Shaw describe...
Is there a most practical way to make value and momentum work together across stocks? In the April 2016 version of their paper entitled “Combining Value and Momentum”, Gregg Fisher, Ronnie Shah and Sheridan Titman examine long-only stock portfolios...
How well does technical trading work for spot currency exchange rates? In their April 2016 paper entitled “Technical Trading: Is it Still Beating the Foreign Exchange Market?”, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Mark Taylor and Zigan Wang test the effectiveness of...
Can investors exploit economic data for monthly stock market timing? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Getting the Most Out of Macroeconomic Information for Predicting Excess Stock Returns”, Cem Cakmaklı and Dick van Dijk test whether a model employing 118...
Does a surge in patent activity predict a surge in, or creative destruction of, equity value? To explore this question, assuming patent applications need not be approved to be exploited, we examine relationships between the growth rates...
Do commodity price changes predict currency exchange rate fluctuations for commodity-exporting countries? In their March 2016 paper entitled “When the Walk is Not Random: Commodity Prices and Exchange Rates”, Emanuel Kohlscheen, Fernando Avalos and Andreas Schrimpf analyze relationships...
Does adding crash protection based on global market breadth enhance the reliability of dual momentum? In their April 2016 paper entitled “Protective Asset Allocation (PAA): A Simple Momentum-Based Alternative for Term Deposits”, Wouter Keller and Jan Willem...
Are illiquid assets competitive as investments with liquid financial assets over the long run? In his March 2016 paper entitled “The Long-Term Returns to Durable Assets”, Christophe Spaenjers summarizes long-term returns for three types of illiquid assets since...
Are the backtests provided for alternative beta investment products representative of their future live performance? In their March 2016 paper entitled “Quantifying Backtest Overfitting in Alternative Beta Strategies”, Antti Suhonen, Matthias Lennkh and Fabrice Perez compare the backtested and live...
How should investors (particularly retirees) think about balancing short-term crash risk and long-term portfolio sustainability? In their March 2016 paper entitled “Asset Allocation with Short and Long Term Risk Objectives”, Peng Wang and Jon Spinney present a way to balance...
Can a typical investor exploit the high returns reported for Piotroski’s FSCORE strategy as applied to U.S. stocks? In their October 2015 paper entitled “The Piotroski F-Score: A Fundamental Value Strategy Revisited from an Investor’s Perspective”, Christopher Krauss,...
Is there a best measure of investor sentiment for predicting stock market returns? In his March 2016 paper entitled “Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Returns”, Lee Smales updates relationships between stock market/portfolio returns and five sentiment measures: CBOE...