October 15, 2015 Currency Trading, Volatility Effects
Are higher even moments of asset return distributions useful predictors of future returns? In the September 2015 version of her paper entitled “A Low-Risk Strategy based on Higher Moments in Currency Markets”, Claudia Zunft explores an adaptive currency trading strategy...
October 13, 2015 Equity Options
When does it make sense to exercise equity options early? Does it happen frequently? In the September 2015 version of their paper entitled “Early Option Exercise: Never Say Never”, Mads Jensen and Lasse Pedersen investigate the...
October 12, 2015 Investing Expertise, Sentiment Indicators
“Mark Hulbert’s NASDAQ Newsletter Sentiment Index” reviews the usefulness of the Hulbert Stock Newsletter Sentiment Index (HSNSI), which “reflects the average recommended stock market exposure among a subset of short-term market timers tracked by the Hulbert Financial Digest.”...
October 6, 2015 Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
Is there a “trick” to good results for risk parity backtests? In their April 2014 brief research paper entitled “The Risks of Risk Parity”, the Brandes Institute examines the sustainability of a critical performance driver for the risk...
October 5, 2015 Fundamental Valuation
How do those whose jobs involve stock valuation perform this task? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Equity Valuation: A Survey of Professional Practice”, Jerald Pinto, Thomas Robinson and John Stowe report results of a 38-question equity valuation practices...
October 2, 2015 Technical Trading
Are annual stock market winning and losing streaks informative about future market performance? To investigate, we consider up and down annual streaks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). We look at streaks in two ways: Retrospective...
September 30, 2015 Big Ideas, Strategic Allocation
Robert Carver introduces his 2015 book, Systematic Trading: A Unique New Method for Designing Trading and Investing Systems, by stating that: “I don’t believe there is any magic system that will automatically make you huge profits, and you should...
September 28, 2015 Technical Trading
What drives the profitability of algorithmic long-short statistical arbitrage trading (such as pairs trading) of liquid U.S. stocks? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Performance v. Turnover: A Story by 4,000 Alphas”, Zura Kakushadze and Igor Tulchinsky...
September 24, 2015 Aesthetic Investments
Is an art collection a good investment? In the August 2015 version of their paper entitled “Art as an Asset and Keynes the Collector”, David Chambers, Elroy Dimson and Christophe Spaenjers study the performance of an actual...
September 23, 2015 Mutual/Hedge Funds
What are the principal themes of research on hedge funds published in top journals over the past decade? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Hedge Funds: A Survey of the Academic Literature”, Vikas Agarwal, Kevin Mullally...
September 21, 2015 Momentum Investing, Size Effect
Are there exploitable size and momentum effects among international stocks? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Size and Momentum Profitability in International Stock Markets”, Peter Schmidt, Urs Von Arx, Andreas Schrimpf, Alexander Wagner and Andreas Ziegler examine the size effect...
September 18, 2015 Gold, Technical Trading
Does simple technical analysis based on moving averages work on high-frequency spot gold and silver trading? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Does Technical Analysis Beat the Market? – Evidence from High Frequency Trading in Gold...
September 17, 2015 Momentum Investing
Does a stock momentum strategy selecting only persistent winners and losers work better than a conventional strategy that includes one-month wonders? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Persistency of the Momentum Effect: The Role of Consistent Winners...
September 16, 2015 Investing Expertise, Sentiment Indicators
Are readily available crowdsourced firm earnings estimates and stock sentiment measurements exploitable? In the September 2015 revision of their paper entitled “Tweet Sentiments and Crowd-Sourced Earnings Estimates as Valuable Sources of Information Around Earnings Releases”, Jim Kyung-Soo...
September 10, 2015 Volatility Effects
How can investors best exploit research showing that low-beta (high-beta) stocks tend to outperform (underperform)? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Low-Beta Investment Strategies”, Olaf Kornz and Laura-Chloe Kuntz test 32 “zero-cost” (long-short) strategies designed to exploit the beta...
September 9, 2015 Fundamental Valuation, Investing Expertise, Technical Trading
Are expert technicians or fundamentalists better forecasters of short-term and intermediate-term asset returns? In the August 2015 version of their paper entitled “Talking Numbers: Technical versus Fundamental Recommendations”, Doron Avramov, Guy Kaplanski and Haim Levy assess the economic...
September 8, 2015 Commodity Futures
Do behaviors of commodity futures over the past decade require updating of beliefs based on earlier research? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Conquering Misperceptions about Commodity Futures Investing”, Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey update and interpret...
September 4, 2015 Size Effect, Value Premium
What qualifiers can enhance the performance of a small value stock strategy? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Leveraged Small Value Equities”, Brian Chingono and Daniel Rasmussen devise and test a strategy to refine a portfolio of small...
September 3, 2015 Momentum Investing, Volatility Effects
What indicator works best to mitigate stock momentum strategy crashes? In his March 2015 paper entitled “Momentum Crash Management”, Mahdi Heidari compares performances of seven indicators for avoiding conventional stock momentum strategy crashes: (1) prior-month market return; (2)...
September 1, 2015 Equity Premium
Does combining the outputs of many methods of estimating the equity risk premium (ERP) produce a useful result? In their February 2015 paper entitled “The Equity Risk Premium: A Review of Models”, Fernando Duarte and Carlo Rosa estimate...
August 27, 2015 Equity Premium
Does the new Fama-French five-factor model of stock returns explain a wider range of anomalies than the workhorse Fama-French three-factor model. In the June 2015 update of their paper entitled “Dissecting Anomalies with a Five-Factor Model”, Eugene...
August 26, 2015 Equity Premium
Does the set of variables that have the strongest correlations with subsequent U.S. stock market returns over the prior decade usefully predict market returns out-of-sample? In the July 2015 draft of their paper entitled “A Practitioner’s Defense of...
August 21, 2015 Gold
Where is the price of gold headed? In their August 2015 paper entitled “The Golden Constant”, Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey apply a “golden constant” hypothesis (inflation is the principal driver of the price of gold) to project the...
August 19, 2015 Currency Trading
Is there an easy way to avoid unfavorable positions within a currency carry trade strategy (long currencies with high interest rates and short those with low)? In their July 2015 paper entitled “Conditioning Carry Trades: Less Risk,...
August 18, 2015 Big Ideas
What does a large online repository of research on financial markets say about community interactions? In the August 2015 version of his article entitled “Recent Trends in Empirical Finance”, Marcos Lopez de Prado measures trends in level...