Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/10/19 through 6/14/19. 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.

“Chicago Fed NFCI as U.S. Stock Market Predictor” suggests that weekly change in the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) may be a useful indicator of future U.S. stock market returns. We test its practical value via two strategies that are each week in SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) when prior change in Keep Reading

A subscriber suggested that the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) may be a useful U.S. stock market predictor. NFCI “provides a comprehensive weekly update on U.S. financial conditions in money markets, debt and equity markets, and the traditional and ‘shadow’ banking systems.” It consists of 105 inputs, including the S&P 500 Implied Keep Reading

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

Is there a straightforward way to model the returns on U.S. Corporate bond indexes? In his April 2019 paper entitled “Give Credit Where Credit is Due: What Explains Corporate Bond Returns?”, Roni Israelov models returns on these indexes based on four intuitive factors: Positive exposure to government bond yields, quantified via duration-matched government bonds. Negative Keep Reading

Considering taxes, in what order should U.S. retirees consume different sources of retirement savings/income? In their August 2018 paper entitled “Constructing Tax Efficient Withdrawal Strategies for Retirees with Traditional 401(k)/IRAs, Roth 401(k)/IRAs, and Taxable Accounts”, James DiLellio and Daniel Ostrov describe and illustrate an algorithm that computes individualized tax-efficient consumption for U.S. retirees of: Tax-deferred Keep Reading

Are U.S. stock and sector momentum strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider five momentum-oriented U.S. equity ETFs with assets over $100 million, all currently available (in order of decreasing assets): iShares Edge MSCI USA Momentum Factor (MTUM) – holds U.S. large-capitalization and mid-capitalization stocks with relatively high momentum. First Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/3/19 through 6/7/19. 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.

Do all kinds of assets and long-short equity factor premiums exhibit exploitable time series (intrinsic or absolute momentum)? In their September 2018 paper entitled “Trends Everywhere”, Abhilash Babu, Ari Levine, Yao Hua Ooi, Lasse Pedersen and Erik Stamelos test intrinsic momentum on 58 traditional (studied in prior research) assets, 82 alternative (futures, forwards, and swaps Keep Reading

Are mean-variance (MV) strategies preferable for allocations to asset classes and equal-weight (EW) preferable for allocations to much noisier individual assets? In their May 2019 paper entitled “Horses for Courses: Mean-Variance for Asset Allocation and 1/N for Stock Selection”, Emmanouil Platanakis, Charles Sutcliffe and Xiaoxia Ye address this question. They focus on the Bayes-Stein shrinkage Keep Reading