Investing Research Articles

…fundamental analysis (especially accrual-related indication of poor earnings quality) helps valuation-motivated short sellers identify stocks likely to experience reversal of strong past returns.

…evidence indicates that short sellers are on average skilled public information processors, successfully discriminating between future underperformers and outperformers, with exploitation concentrated after several categories of news releases.

Does shorting the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) with crash protection (attempting to capture the equity volatility risk premium safely) work? To investigate, we apply crash protection rules to three VXX shorting scenarios: Let It Ride – shorting an initial amount of VXX and letting this position ride indefinitely. Fixed Reset – shorting… Keep Reading

Analyses in “Shorting VXX with Crash Protection” suggest that one-month momentum may be a useful signal for trading in and out of a short position in iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX). A subscriber inquired whether a short-term version of this signal is effective. Specifically, how useful is a strategy that goes short VXX… Keep Reading

In the June 2018 draft of their paper entitled “An Information Factor: Can Informed Traders Make Abnormal Profits?”, Matthew Ma, Xiumin Martin, Matthew Ringgenberg and Guofu Zhou construct and test a long-short information factor (INFO) based on observed trading of firm insiders, short sellers and option traders. Specifically, the INFO portfolio: Is each month long the 10% (decile) of… Keep Reading

We evaluate here the market commentary of Richard Rhodes, previously available via Zacks.com over the period March 2004 through October 2005. Richard Rhodes, editor of “The Rhodes Report” newsletter, is one of Zacks’ “pros.” His “proprietary models…provide specific trading recommendations not found at any other shop on or off of Wall Street.” The table below… Keep Reading

How well do long-short stock strategies work, after accounting for all costs? In their February 2014 paper entitled “Assessing the Cost of Accounting-Based Long-Short Trades: Should You Invest a Billion Dollars in an Academic Strategy?”, William Beaver, Maureen McNichols and Richard Price examine the net attractiveness of several long-short strategies as stand-alone investments (as for… Keep Reading

…available data is insufficient to determine whether Phil Erlanger’s Research is exploitable on a net basis. Portfolio overhead and biases in self-reported hypothetical returns could offset reported gross market outperformance for most investors.

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here Bill Fleckenstein’s commentary in the “Contrarian Chronicles” at MSN Money since August 2002 (the earliest we can find). Bill Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital, manages a hedge fund based in Seattle. The table below quotes forecast highlights from the cited source and shows the performance of the S&P… Keep Reading

…without more convincing validation of the performance/trade data offered, curious investors may want to track live trading signals at Long-Short-Timing.com for themselves over a reasonably long period to assess their economic value.