Equity Premium

Who beats the stock market and why? In his October 2019 paper entitled “The Five Investor Camps That Try to Beat the Stock Market”, William Ziemba discusses how different categories of investors succeed. For investors pursuing active strategies, he addresses broadly the means of getting an edge and betting well. Based on his academic work and practical experience, he concludes that: Keep Reading

What are asset class return expectations and associated portfolio allocations of very sophisticated U.S. investors? In their February 2019 paper entitled “The Return Expectations of Institutional Investors”, Aleksandar Andonov and Joshua Rauh analyze disclosures of expected returns across asset classes among U.S. public pension funds, which hold assets of about $4 trillion (see the first chart below), including fixed income, cash, equities, real assets, hedge funds, private equity and other asset classes. Taking into account past fund performance, they investigate how fund managers estimate future returns. Disclosures also reveal target allocations to asset classes (see the second chart below). Together, expected asset class returns and target allocations allow calculation of expected portfolio returns. Using annual disclosures for 228 U.S. state and local government pension plans during 2014 through 2017, they find that:

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Is the conventional wisdom that exchange-traded funds (ETF) are efficient, low-cost alternatives to mutual funds correct? In their September 2019 paper entitled “The Performance of Exchange-Traded Funds”, David Blitz and Milan Vidojevic evaluate the performance of a comprehensive, survivorship bias-free sample of U.S. equity ETFs. They first divide the sample into three groups: (1) broad market index trackers; (2) inverse and leveraged funds; and, (3) others. They then subdivide group 3 into equity factor subgroups (small, value, dividend, momentum, quality or low-risk) based on either their names or their empirical exposures to widely accepted factor premiums. Finally, they compare performances of value-weighted ETF groups to those of the broad U.S. stock market and specified factors, focusing on data starting January 2004 when there are at least 100 ETFs of some variety. Using trading data and descriptions for 918 U.S. equity ETFs (642 live and 276 dead by the end of the sample period) and equity factor returns during January 1993 through December  2017, they find that: Keep Reading

Do bonds have a bad rap based on an unfavorable subsample? In the September 2019 revisions of his papers entitled “The US Bond Market Before 1926: Investor Total Return from 1793, Comparing Federal, Municipal, and Corporate Bonds Part I: 1793 to 1857” and “Part II: 1857 to 1926”, Edward McQuarrie revisits analysis of returns to bonds in the U.S. prior to 1926. He focuses on investor holding period returns rather than yields, considering U.S. Treasury, state, city and corporate debt. Specifically, he estimates returns to a 19th century diversified bond portfolio comprised of all long-term investment grade bonds trading in any year (free of contaminating factors such as circulation privileges and tax exemptions). Returns assume:

1. Weights are proportional to amounts outstanding.
2. Bonds are far from before maturity.
3. Calculations use actual bond prices.

In other words, he calculates performance of a diversified index fund tracking actual long-term, investment-grade 19th century U.S. bonds. He also calculates returns to sub-indexes as feasible. He further constructs a new stock index for the period January 1793 to January 1871 and revisits conclusions in Stocks for the Long Run about relative performances of stocks and bonds. Using newly and previously compiled U.S. bond and stock prices extending back to January 1793, he finds that:

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“SACEMS-SACEVS for Value-Momentum Diversification” finds that the “Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy” (SACEVS) and the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS) are mutually diversifying. Do longer samples available from “SACEVS Applied to Mutual Funds” and “SACEMS Applied to Mutual Funds” confirm this finding? To check, we look at the following three equal-weighted (50-50) combinations of the two strategies, rebalanced monthly:

1. SACEVS Best Value paired with SACEMS Top 1 (aggressive value and aggressive momentum).
2. SACEVS Best Value paired with SACEMS Equally Weighted (EW) Top 3 (aggressive value and diversified momentum).
3. SACEVS Weighted paired with SACEMS EW Top 3 (diversified value and diversified momentum).

Using monthly gross returns for SACEVS and SACEMS mutual fund portfolios during September 1997 through July 2019, we find that:

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In response to “OFR FSI as Stock Market Return Predictor”, a subscriber suggested overlaying a 10-month simple moving average (SMA10) technical indicator on the Office of Financial Research Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) fundamental indicator for timing SPDR S&P 500 (SPY). The intent of the suggested overlay is to expand risk-on opportunities safely. To test the overlay, we add four strategies (4 through 7) to the prior three, each evaluated since January 2000 and since January 2009:

1. SPY – buy and hold SPY.
2. OFR FSI-Cash – hold SPY (cash as proxied by 3-month U.S. Treasury bills) when OFR FSI at the end of the prior month is negative or zero (positive).
3. OFR-FSI-VFITX – hold SPY (Vanguard Intermediate-Term Treasury Fund Investor Shares, VFITX, as a more aggressive risk-off asset than cash) when OFR FSI at the end of the prior month is negative or zero (positive).
4. SMA10-Cash – hold SPY (cash) when the S&P 500 Index is above (at or below) its SMA10 at the end of the prior month.
5. SMA10-VFITX – hold SPY (VFITX) when the S&P 500 Index is above (at or below) its SMA10 at the end of the prior month.
6. OFR-FSI-SMA10-Cash – hold SPY (cash) when either signal 2 or signal 4 specifies SPY. Otherwise, hold cash.
7. OFR-FSI-SMA10-VFITX – hold SPY (cash) when either signal 3 or signal 5 specifies SPY. Otherwise, hold VFITX.

Using end-of-month values of OFR FSI, SPY total return and level of the S&P 500 Index during January 2000 (OFR FSI inception) through June 2019, we find that:

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Should investors consider allocations to products that track equity volatility indexes? In her July 2019 paper entitled “Challenges of Indexation in S&P 500 Index Volatility Investment Strategies”, Margaret Sundberg examines whether behaviors of S&P 500 Index option-based volatility indexes justify treatment of volatility as an asset class. To assess potential strategies, she employs the following indexes:

• S&P 500 Index
• S&P 500 Total Return Index
• S&P 500 Option-implied volatility index (VIX)
• S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index
• S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Inverse Index
• S&P 500 Iron Condor Index
• S&P 500 PutWrite Index

Using daily time series for these indexes during April 2008 through March 2019, she finds that: 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:

1. Market (MKT).
2. Size – small minus big market capitalizations (SMB).
3. Value – high minus low book-to-market ratios (HML).
4. Momentum – winners minus losers (WML)
5. Investment – conservative minus aggressive (CMA).
6. Operating profitability – robust minus weak (RMW).
7. Volatility – stable minus volatile (SMV).

For factors 2-7, monthly returns derive from portfolios that are long (short) the value-weighted fifth of stocks with the highest (lowest) expected returns. In general, factor momentum timing means each month scaling investment in a factor from 0 to 1 according its how high its last-month excess return is relative to an inception-to-date window of past levels. They consider also two variations that smooth the simple timing signal to suppress the incremental trading that it drives. In assessing costs of this incremental trading, they assume (based on other papers) that realistic one-way trading frictions are in the range 0.1% to 0.5%. Using monthly data for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks during July 1963 through November 2014, they find that: Keep Reading

Is the Office of Financial Research Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI), described in “The OFR Financial Stress Index”, useful as a U.S. stock market return predictor? OFR FSI is a daily snapshot of global financial market stress, distilling more than 30 indicators via a dynamic weighting scheme. The index drops and adds indicators over time as some become obsolete and new ones become available. Unlike some other financial stress indicators, past OFR FSI series values do not change due to any periodic renormalization and are therefore suitable for backtesting. To investigate OFR FSI power to predict U.S. stock market returns, we relate level of and change in OFR FSI to SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) returns. Using daily and monthly values of OFR FSI and SPY total returns during January 2000 (OFR FSI inception) through June 2019, we find that:

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Do most stocks worldwide beat the risk-free rate of return? In their July 2019 paper entitled “Do Global Stocks Outperform US Treasury Bills?”, Hendrik Bessembinder, Te-Feng Chen, Goeun Choi and John Wei  compare returns of individual global common stocks to that of 1-month U.S. Treasury bills (T-bills). They screen stock price data for obvious errors and filter/correct accordingly. For delisted stocks with no delisting return available, they set the final return to -30%. Using monthly returns with reinvested dividends in U.S. dollars for 17,505 U.S. and 44,476 non-U.S. stocks across 41 other countries (25 developed and 16 emerging) and monthly T-bill yield during 1990 through 2018, they find that:

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