Can individual investors make a living by day trading? In their July 2019 paper entitled “Day Trading for a Living?”, Fernando Chague, Rodrigo De-Losso and Bruno Giovannetti analyze performances of all Brazilian retail investors who begin trading futures on the main Brazilian stock index during 2013 through 2015 and persist in this trading for at Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 8/12/19 through 8/16/19. 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.

Are stock quality strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider four 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

Throughout each month, the National Federation of Independent Businesses surveys members on ten components of business conditions they anticipate six months hence. They issue findings on the second Tuesday of the following month in “Small Business Economic Trends”, including a Small Business Optimism Index (SBOI). Are the expectations of responding small business owners a “grass roots” predictor Keep Reading

In their July 2019 paper entitled “Momentum-Managed Equity Factors”, Volker Flögel, Christian Schlag and Claudia Zunft test exploitation of positive first-order autocorrelation (time series, absolute or intrinsic momentum) in monthly excess returns of seven equity factor portfolios: Market (MKT). Size – small minus big market capitalizations (SMB). Value – high minus low book-to-market ratios (HML). Keep Reading

The Inflation Forecast now incorporates actual total and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for July 2019. The actual total (core) inflation rate for July is higher than (higher than) forecasted.

The “Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy” (SACEVS) seeks diversification across a small set of asset class exchanged-traded funds (ETF), plus a monthly tactical edge from potential undervaluation of three risk premiums: Term – monthly difference between the 10-year Constant Maturity U.S. Treasury note (T-note) yield and the 3-month Constant Maturity U.S. Treasury bill (T-bill) yield. Credit – monthly difference between the Moody’s Keep Reading

Is the level, or changes in the level, of Federal Reserve (Fed) holdings of U.S. Treasuries (bills, notes, bonds and TIPS, measured weekly as of Wednesday) an indicator of future stock market and/or Treasuries returns? To investigate, we take dividend-adjusted SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) and iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) as tradable proxies for the U.S. Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 8/5/19 through 8/9/19. 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 systematically selling covered call options on equity indexes, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider four equity covered call ETFs: Invesco S&P 500 BuyWrite ETF (PBP) – seeks to track the CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite Index (BXM). Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF (HSPX) – seeks to track the CBOE Keep Reading