Investing Research Articles

We evaluate here the weekly “The Outlook” column in BusinessWeek online by Standard and Poor’s since May 2003 (the earliest available). According to Standard & Poor’s, “‘The Outlook‘ is a unique investment advisory service…[that] provides solid research, unbiased investment ideas and market perspective… [It] presents investment information and advice in a concise way that helps… Keep Reading

As suggested by two readers, we review here the U.S. stock market forecasts of Steve Saville at Safe Haven since March 2003. Steve Saville is the editor of The Speculative Investor. His forecasts “are conceived by integrating the analysis of fundamental, technical, psychological, monetary and political factors…” with “…dual focuses on the stock market (primarily… Keep Reading

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the Forbes.com commentary of Gary Shilling regarding the broad U.S. stock market since the beginning of 2000. Gary Shilling is founder of A. Gary Shilling & Company, Inc., which uses a “top down” approach, “emphasizing the major themes, developed from our economic, financial, and political analysis, that… Keep Reading

Are broad measures of public sociopolitical sentiment relevant to investors? Do they predict stock returns as indicators of exuberance and fear? To investigate, we relate S&P 500 Index return and 12-month trailing S&P 500 price-operating earnings ratio (P/E) to the percentage of respondents saying “yes” to the recurring Gallup polling question: “In general, are you… Keep Reading

Past research relating U.S. stock market returns to the party holding the Presidency mostly concludes that Democratic presidents are better for the stock market than Republican presidents. However, Presidents share power conferred by the electorate with Congress. Does historical data confirm that Democratic control of Congress is also better for stock market returns than Republican… Keep Reading

We evaluate here Tobin Smith’s weekly “WaveWire” commentary at ChangeWave.com since May 2000. Tobin Smith is founder and editor of ChangeWave Investing and author of related books, with a presence on radio and television. ChangeWave Investing is a service of ChangeWave Research, which “provides real world, real-time data and insight into the future performance of… Keep Reading

Can investors count on stock markets reverting to some valuation benchmark? In their March 2010 paper entitled “Mean Reversion in International Stock Markets: An Empirical Analysis of the 20th Century”, Laura Spierdijk, Jaap Bikker and Pieter van den Hoek analyze reversion of 17 developed country stock market indexes to a valuation benchmark based on a… Keep Reading

The U.S. Democratic and Republican political parties arguably exhibit persistently different policy inclinations that affect the aggregate performance of public companies and therefore the U.S. stock market. “Party in Power and Stock Returns” investigates annual stock returns for different combinations of the party in control of the the Presidency, the House of Representatives and the… Keep Reading

Author Jeff Augen describes his 2010 book Trading Realities: The Truth, the Lies, and the Hype In-Between as “designed to help investors understand the economic and political forces that drive financial markets and to invest alongside those forces instead of against them. It also provides a blunt assessment of the limitations that most private investors… Keep Reading

How effective are tax-deferred savings in avoiding federal income taxes over a lifetime? In their May 2011 paper entitled “The Tax Benefit of Income Smoothing”, Kristian Rydqvist, Steven Schwartz and Joshua Spizman estimate the lifetime benefit of postponing federal income tax liability until retirement by contributing pre-tax dollars to individual or employer-sponsored retirement savings while… Keep Reading