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Investing Research Articles

84 Research Articles

Market Volatility as Crisis Predictor

Do equity market volatility behaviors predict financial crises? In their October 2016 paper entitled “Learning from History: Volatility and Financial Crises”, Jon Danielsson, Marcela Valenzuela and Ilknur Zer investigate linkages among  stock market volatility, risk-taking and financial market crises over the very long run. Their volatility measurement methodology is: Measure volatility annually as standard deviation of 12 monthly returns (July through… Keep Reading

The Power of Stories?

Do narratives (stories) sometimes trump rationality in financial markets? In his January 2017 paper entitled “Narrative Economics”, Robert Shiller considers the epidemiology (spread, mutation and fading) of stories as related to economic fluctuations. He explores the 1920-21 depression, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Great Recession of 2007-9 and the political-economic situation of today as… Keep Reading

Precious Metals as Safe Havens

Are precious metals effective safe havens, preserving capital when stocks and bonds crash? In their January 2017 paper entitled “Reassessing the Role of Precious Metals as Safe Havens – What Colour is Your Haven and Why?”, Sile Li and Brian Lucey assess whether four precious metals (gold, silver, platinum and palladium) are safe havens relative to stock market… Keep Reading

Combined Sell-in-May and Pre-election-year Effects

Does “sell-in-May” interact with the U.S. election cycle? In the April 2017 update of their paper entitled “Buy Equities in Winter and Sell in May in Pre-Election Years: Market Premiums and Political Uncertainty in the Presidential Cycle”, Kam Fong Chan and Terry Marsh examine interactions between seasonal (May-October versus April-November) and U.S. election cycle effects on U.S. Stock… Keep Reading

How Financial Journalists Work

How do journalists develop the information that appears in the financial media? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Meet the Press: Survey Evidence on Financial Journalists As Information Intermediaries”, Andrew Call, Scott Emett, Eldar Maksymov and Nathan Sharp report results of a survey of and follow-up interviews with financial journalists on inputs, incentives and beliefs that shape their reporting. Using 462… Keep Reading

Automation Bias Among Individual Investors

Who do investors trust more, expert advisors or algorithms? In her March 2019 paper entitled “Algorithmic Decision-Making: The Death of Second Opinions?”, Nizan Packin employs a survey conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk to assess automation bias when making significant investment decisions. Each of four groups of respondents received one of the following four questions (response… Keep Reading

Weekly Summary of Research Findings: 5/28/19 – 5/31/19

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 5/28/19 through 5/31/19. 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.

Factor Premium Reliability and Timing

How reliable and variable are the most widely accepted long-short factor premiums across asset classes? Can investors time factor premium? In their June 2019 paper entitled “Factor Premia and Factor Timing: A Century of Evidence”, Antti Ilmanen, Ronen Israel, Tobias Moskowitz, Ashwin Thapar and Franklin Wang examine multi-class robustness of and variation in four prominent… Keep Reading

National Election Cycle and Stocks Over the Long Run

“Stock Market and the National Election Cycle” examines the behavior of the U.S. stock market across the U.S. presidential term cycle (years 1, 2, 3 or 4) starting in 1950. Is a longer sample informative? To extend the sample period, we use the long run S&P Composite Index of Robert Shiller. The value of this… Keep Reading

Stocks for the Long Run Internationally

Are buy-and-hold stock market returns attractive over the long run globally? In their May 2020 paper entitled “Stocks for the Long Run? Evidence from a Broad Sample of Developed Markets”, Aizhan Anarkulova, Scott Cederburg and Michael O’Doherty apply a stationary block bootstrap procedure (retaining some time series features) to generate distributions of 1,000,000 each 1-month… Keep Reading