March 8, 2013 Big Ideas, Volatility Effects
Does use of alphas from linear factor models to identify anomalies in U.S. stock returns mislead investors? In the February 2013 draft of their paper entitled “Using Maximum Drawdowns to Capture Tail Risk”, Wesley Gray...
March 7, 2013 Momentum Investing, Technical Trading
Do time-series (intrinsic) momentum rules for timing stocks beat comparable simple moving average (SMA) rules? In the February 2013 version of their paper entitled “Time-Series Momentum Versus Moving Average Trading Rules”, Ben Marshall, Nhut Nguyen...
March 4, 2013 Strategic Allocation
Are target‐date (glidepath) funds that periodically decrease (increase) allocation to stocks (bonds and cash) as the investor ages competitive with alternative strategies? In his February 2013 paper entitled “The Glidepath Illusion: An International Perspective”, Javier...
March 1, 2013 Big Ideas, Individual Gurus
...Carly Garner's A Trader's First Book on Commodities is a well-calibrated introduction (as advertised) to trading commodity futures and options, but readers will have to dig deeper for robust investigations of trading strategies.
February 28, 2013 Volatility Effects
Do low-beta equity strategies work differently for industries and countries compared to individual stocks? In their January 2013 paper entitled “The Low Risk Anomaly: A Decomposition into Micro and Macro Effects”, Malcolm Baker, Brendan Bradley and...
February 27, 2013 Equity Options, Sentiment Indicators
The conventional wisdom is that a high (low) ratio of equity put option volume to equity call option volume is bullish (bearish) because it indicates that investors are overly pessimistic (optimistic). Alternative measurements of the...
February 26, 2013 Equity Premium, Volatility Effects
Do returns for country stock markets vary systematically with the return volatilities of those markets? In their December 2012 paper entitled “Are Investors Compensated for Bearing Market Volatility in a Country?”, Samuel Liang and John...
February 25, 2013 Buybacks-Secondaries
Has the market evolved to extinguish exploitability of reactions to corporate stock buyback and secondary offering activities? In their December 2012 draft paper entitled “The Persistence of Long-Run Abnormal Stock Returns: Evidence from Stock Repurchases...
February 22, 2013 Technical Trading
Do trading rules based on price relative to intermediate-term and long-term simple moving averages (SMA) outperform a buy-and-hold approach for all kinds of stocks and stock portfolios? In the January 2013 update of his paper...
February 21, 2013 Strategic Allocation
In the current environment of low bond yields, what is a safe investment withdrawal rate during retirement? In their January 2013 paper entitled “The 4% Rule is Not Safe in a Low-Yield World”, Michael Finke,...
February 20, 2013 Fundamental Valuation, Technical Trading
Are there exploitable long-term cycles in U.S. stock market returns? In the January 2013 update of his paper entitled “Secular Mean Reversion and Long-Run Predictability of the Stock Market”, Valeriy Zakamulin explores mean reversion of...
February 19, 2013 Volatility Effects
How does volatility interact with market beta? In his 2012 paper entitled “Volatility and Compounding Effects on Beta and Returns”, William Trainor investigates the performance of stocks sorted on market beta overall and during intervals of...
February 18, 2013 Commodity Futures, Currency Trading
...Carly Garner's A Trader's First Book on Commodities is a well-calibrated introduction (as advertised) to trading commodity futures and options, but readers will have to dig deeper for robust investigations of trading strategies.
February 14, 2013 Strategic Allocation
How should investors choose among alternative tactical asset allocation strategies? In their January 2013 paper entitled “Rethinking the Asset Allocation Approach for Plan Sponsors”, Pranay Gupta and Sven Skallsjo present a multi-strategy tactical asset allocation...
February 13, 2013 Investing Expertise, Strategic Allocation
What research is available on investment approaches, allocations and results for U.S. university endowments? In their January 2013 paper entitled “A Survey of University Endowment Management Research”, Georg Cejnek, Richard Franz, Otto Randl and Neal...
February 12, 2013 Strategic Allocation
Which risk-based asset allocation method is best? In their January 2013 preliminary paper entitled “Generalized Risk-Based Investing”, Emmanuel Jurczenko, Thierry Michel and Jerome Teletche present a general framework for risk-based asset allocation depending on two...
February 11, 2013 Big Ideas, Strategic Allocation
How should investors measure the value of tactical deviations from a strategic asset class allocation? In their December 2012 draft paper entitled “A Framework for Examining Asset Allocation Alpha”, Jason Hsu and Omid Shakernia decompose...
February 6, 2013 Sentiment Indicators, Volatility Effects
How does aggregate stock news sentiment relate to equity market return and volatility? In his October 2012 paper entitled “Time-Varying Relationship of News Sentiment, Implied Volatility and Stock Returns”, Lee Smales investigates relationships among aggregate unscheduled...
February 5, 2013 Equity Options, Volatility Effects
Does market underestimation of stock price uncertainty around earnings announcements support a short-term straddle strategy (call option and put option with matched strike and expiration, profitable with large stock price moves)? In their January 2013 paper...
February 4, 2013 Momentum Investing, Technical Trading
Do stock indexes behave predictably after extreme price levels, such as 52-week highs and 52-week lows? To investigate, we consider the behaviors of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the S&P 500 Index and the...
January 29, 2013 Mutual/Hedge Funds, Technical Trading
Do mutual fund managers who employ technical analysis outperform those who do not? In their January 2013 paper entitled “Head and Shoulders above the Rest? The Performance of Institutional Portfolio Managers who Use Technical Analysis”,...
January 28, 2013 Technical Trading
Do moving average rules work for timing stocks over the long run? In his January 2013 paper entitled “The Rise and Fall of Technical Trading Rule Success”, Nicholas Taylor examines the performance of moving average trading...
January 25, 2013 Investing Expertise
Do analyst stock ratings usefully predict associated returns? In his November 2012 paper entitled “Are Stock Recommendations Useful”, Ireneus Stanislawek examines the relationship between stock ratings offered by sell-side analysts around the globe over the past decade...
January 15, 2013 Momentum Investing
Does purifying stock returns (by using only the parts of returns unexplained by the Fama-French market, size and value factors) improve momentum strategy performance? Does avoiding extreme losers that may sharply reverse further enhance performance?...
January 11, 2013 Aesthetic Investments
Are diamonds useful as investment portfolio diversifiers? In their draft papers entitled “An Examination of Diamonds as an Alternative Asset Class: Do They Have What it Takes to Make a Portfolio Sparkle?” of June 2012 and...