Investing Research Articles

Robo-advisors provide investors automated financial advice with varying levels of sophistication and degrees of individual tailoring. In their December 2019 book chapter entitled “Robo-advising”, Francesco D’Acunto and Alberto Rossi catalog the main features of robo-advising with respect to personalization, discretion, involvement and human interaction. They consider robo-advisors designed to assist short-term and medium-term (active) trading… Keep Reading

Some exchange-traded funds (ETF) focus on capturing potentially attractive factor premiums or thematic niches. Their histories offer a way to test these concepts live. We have conducted many such tests, listed here to offer a global view. “U.S. Equity Premium?” – evidence from simple tests on about 21 years of data suggests that stock market… Keep Reading

Do individual investors truly benefit from using full service brokers? In the February 2011 draft of their paper entitled “What is the Impact of Financial Advisors on Retirement Portfolio Choices and Outcomes?”, John Chalmers and Jonathan Reuter compare outcomes for those Oregon University System’s Optional Retirement Plan participants who choose a firm that uses brokers… Keep Reading

Author Meir Statman states that his 2010 book What Investors Really Want “is about what we want from our investments. It is about how we think about our investments, how we feel about them, and how investment markets drive us crazy as we try to cajole them into giving us what we want… The sum… Keep Reading

Does a flexible robo advisor (offering automated, passive investment strategies tailored to investor situation/preferences) perform well in comparison to mutual fund/stock portfolios they might replace? If so, what inhibits investors from switching to them? In their November 2016 paper entitled “Robo Advisers and Mutual Fund Stickiness”, Michael Reher and Celine Sun compare actual mutual fund/stock portfolios held… Keep Reading

How can long-term investors maximize their edge of strategic patience? In their November 2011 paper entitled “Investing for the Long Run”, Andrew Ang and Knut Kjaer offer advice on successful long-term investing (such as by pension funds).  They define a long-term investor as one having no material short-term liabilities or liquidity demands. Using the California Public Employee’s Retirement System and other large institutions as examples,… Keep Reading

We evaluate here the commentary in “Jubak’s Journal” at MSN Money since January 2001. Jim Jubak is the senior markets editor for MSN Money, with a background in journalism. The table below quotes forecast highlights from the cited source and shows the performance of the S&P 500 Index over various numbers of trading days after the… Keep Reading

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here Gary Savage’s outlooks for the U.S. stock market since May 2007 as extracted from his current Smart Money Tracker blog (since March 2010) and its predecessor site. While Gary Savage states that his “main goal…for the next few years will be to keep investors focused on riding… Keep Reading

…evidence from straightforward tests on a fairly small sample does not support a belief that Jim Rohrbach’s timing approach (including service fees) beats simple benchmarks.

In his January 2018 retrospective “Richard Thaler and the Rise of Behavioral Economics”, Nicholas Barberis reviews the development of behavioral (less than fully rational) models of economics and finance, with focus on Richard Thaler’s contributions. This retrospective summarizes key models that make psychology-based assumptions about: individual preferences; individual beliefs; and, the process by which individuals make decisions. He further segments… Keep Reading