Do stock markets following predictable long boom and bust periods? In the August 2024 draft of their paper entitled “The Anatomy of Lost Stock Market Decades”, Todd Feldman and Brian Yang examine the regularity/frequency of bull periods (strong gains) and lost periods (no gains) of at least 10 years. They also test two metrics to… 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

A subscriber asked for corroboration of a claim that the “Best Companies To Work For” (BCTWF) substantially beat the overall stock market. To investigate, we: Compile the employee survey-based top 10 BCTWF winners for 2014 through 2023 (10 years, so 100 companies). Optimistically assume winner lists are available by the end of March each year… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 9/9/24 through 9/13/24. 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 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

How does the performance of the global multi-class market look when evaluated at a monthly frequency? In their August 2024 paper entitled “The Risk and Reward of Investing”, Ronald Doeswijk and Laurens Swinkels assess global investing rewards and risks via an exhaustive $150 trillion portfolio of investable global assets priced at a monthly frequency, enabling… Keep Reading

The Inflation Forecast now incorporates actual total and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August 2024. The actual total (core) inflation rate is lower than (a little lower than) forecasted.

Do exchange-traded funds (ETF) focused on cybersecurity stocks offer attractive performance? To investigate, we compare performance statistics of six cybersecurity ETFs, all currently available, to those of Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), as follows: Amplify Cybersecurity ETF (HACK) First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) iShares Cybersecurity and Tech ETF (IHAK) Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG) ProShares… Keep Reading

Can pattern recognition software, combined with news sentiment, identify profitable short-term stock trades? In their July 2024 paper entitled “Technical Patterns and News Sentiment in Stock Markets”, Markus Leippold, Qian Wang and Min Yang test the ability of pattern recognition software (convolutional neural network) to find profitable technical reversal patterns within U.S. and Chinese stock… Keep Reading