Recent Investing Research

Are equity multifactor strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider eight multifactor ETFs, all currently available: iShares Edge MSCI Multifactor USA (LRGF) – holds large and mid-cap U.S. stocks with focus on quality, value, size and momentum, while maintaining a level of risk similar to that of the market. The… Keep Reading

Do sophisticated retail investors make money with their news-driven stock trades? In his September 2026 paper entitled “Heterogeneous Retail Investors and their Trading Behavior”, Andrew Glover employs trade size to categorize retail traders as either sophisticated, well-capitalized and experienced (Savvy) or unsophisticated (Naive) and compares their stock trading responses to the same firm disclosures. He… Keep Reading

Does the evolving set of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms based on large language models have sensible views on the most important financial market trends for individual investors? As a simple exploration, we pose to each of Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini the following prompt eliciting key trends: Please very concisely list in descending order… Keep Reading

Are preferred stock strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider seven of the largest preferred stock ETFs, all currently available, in order of longest to shortest available histories: Invesco Financial Preferred (PGF) – generally invests at least 90% of assets in preferred securities of financial institutions. iShares Preferred and Income… Keep Reading

A subscriber asked about current evidence that high-dividend stocks outperform the market. To investigate, we compare performances of 10  exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holding high-dividend stocks to that of SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) as a proxy for the U.S. stock market. The  high-dividend stock ETFs, from oldest to newest, are: iShares Select Dividend ETF (DVY) Invesco Dividend… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 9/14/26 through 9/18/26. 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.

Does the evolving set of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms based on large language models generate sound equity diversification allocations? Are they monolithic, or diverse? As a simple exploration, we pose to each of Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini the following prompt about optimal allocations among broad equity exchange-traded funds (ETF): Considering both expected returns… Keep Reading

Does bitcoin (BTC) return exhibit any exploitable leading or lagging roles with respect to gold (SPDR Gold Shares – GLD) return, change in the all-items consumer price index (CPI) or change in the effective federal funds rate (EFFR) for a monthly measurement interval? To investigate, we compute correlations between monthly BTC return and each of… Keep Reading

Does the U.S. stock market have a predictable pattern of returns around ends of calendar quarters? Do funds deploy cash to bid stocks up at quarter ends to boost portfolio values in quarterly reports (with subsequent reversals)? Or, do they sell stocks to raise cash for fund redemptions? Is any end-of-quarter effect distinct from the… Keep Reading

How do returns of different asset classes recently interact with inflation as measured by monthly change in the not seasonally adjusted, all-items consumer price index (CPI) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics? To investigate, we look at lead-lag relationships between change in CPI and returns for each of the following 10 exchange-traded fund (ETF)… Keep Reading

Having iteratively compared the Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS) with a fixed lookback interval to SACEMS with a VIX-based variable lookback interval over several years, we are dropping the former and adopting the latter as the tracked baseline. We are making one other change to eliminate a legacy data workaround. Specifically:

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 9/8/26 through 9/11/26. 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.