Investing Research Articles

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the accuracy of Gary Kaltbaum’s outlooks for the overall stock market at TradingMarkets.com, available since May 2005. Gary Kaltbaum is an investment advisor and nationally syndicated radio commentator who believes his job is “to interpret market action based on price and volume adding in a little bit… Keep Reading

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the public stock market forecasts of Louis Navellier. Forecasts since the beginning of 2004 come from his weekly “Marketmail” archive. Pre-2004 forecasts (back to March 2001) come indirectly via MarketWatch columns. Louis Navellier is Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Navellier… Keep Reading

Studies of leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETF), such as those summarized in “The Unintended Characteristics of Leveraged and Inverse ETFs” and “The Performance of Leveraged ETFs over Extended Holding Periods”, find that the frequent rebalancing actions necessary to maintain targeted leverage substantially affect long-term performance. A reader observed: “I’ve read so many articles about how the… Keep Reading

We evaluate here the the market commentary of Paul Tracy available via Zacks.com since October 2002. Paul Tracy, founder and Chief Investment Strategist of StreetAuthority, is one of Zacks’ “pros.” StreetAuthority describes itself as “a research-intensive financial publishing firm that aims to level the playing field for small investors by giving them access to the… Keep Reading

Does the tendency of stock market volatility measures to persist offer an exploitable short-term reversion to mean? In other words, can traders win on average by speculating that market volatility spikes will soon reverse? To check, we first test for short-term reversion of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 Index (VIX) over its available… Keep Reading

An array of leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETF) track short-term (daily) changes in commodity and currency exchange indexes. Over longer holding periods, these ETFs tend to veer off track. The cumulative veer can be large. How do leveraged ETFs perform over a multi-year period? What factors contribute to their failure to track underlying indexes? To investigate,… Keep Reading

Are there reliable predictors supporting strategies for timing exchange-traded notes (ETN) constructed from near-term S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) futures, such as iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) and ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY), available since 1/30/09 and 10/4/11, respectively. The managers of these securities buy and sell VIX futures daily… Keep Reading

The authors of the study summarized in “Exploit ETN Deviation from Indicative Value?” argue that deviations of prices for exchange-traded notes (ETN) from their indicative (immediate redemption) values may be useful as trading signals. How well does this mispricing concept work for the very liquid iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-term Futures ETN (VXX)? To check, we consider several… Keep Reading

Should traders discard boring, rather than exciting (outlier), data? In his February 2013 paper entitled “Filtered Market Statistics and Technical Trading Rules” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2013 Wagner Award third place winner), George Yang proposes to filter out as noise the cluster of daily stock market returns near zero for technical analysis purposes. Specifically, he suggests… Keep Reading

Are winning (losing) stocks with the strongest upward (downward) acceleration the best bets for a momentum strategy? In their July 2013 paper entitled “Investor Attention, Visual Price Pattern, and Momentum Investing”, Li-Wen Chen and Hsin-Yi Yu investigate whether visually striking patterns of past prices tend to grab investor attention, induce overreaction and amplify the momentum… Keep Reading