Investing Research Articles

How well does technical trading work for spot currency exchange rates? In their April 2016 paper entitled “Technical Trading: Is it Still Beating the Foreign Exchange Market?”, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Mark Taylor and Zigan Wang test the effectiveness of a broad set of quantitative technical trading rules as applied to exchange rates of 30 currencies with the U.S. dollar… Keep Reading

Can investors exploit economic data for monthly stock market timing? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Getting the Most Out of Macroeconomic Information for Predicting Excess Stock Returns”, Cem Cakmaklı and Dick van Dijk test whether a model employing 118 economic variables improves prediction of monthly U.S. stock market (S&P 500 Index) excess returns based on conventional valuation ratios (dividend yield… Keep Reading

Does a surge in patent activity predict a surge in, or creative destruction of, equity value? To explore this question, assuming patent applications need not be approved to be exploited, we examine relationships between the growth rates of U.S. patent applications/patents as simple measures of innovation and U.S. stock market returns. Using U.S. patent activity (numbers of… Keep Reading

Do commodity price changes predict currency exchange rate fluctuations for commodity-exporting countries? In their March 2016 paper entitled “When the Walk is Not Random: Commodity Prices and Exchange Rates”, Emanuel Kohlscheen, Fernando Avalos  and Andreas Schrimpf analyze relationships between commodity prices and exporter exchange rates. They first construct daily commodity export price indexes tailored to 11 commodity-exporting countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada,… Keep Reading

Does adding crash protection based on global market breadth enhance the reliability of dual momentum? In their April 2016 paper entitled “Protective Asset Allocation (PAA): A Simple Momentum-Based Alternative for Term Deposits”, Wouter Keller and Jan Willem Keuning examine a multi-class, dual-momentum portfolio allocation strategy with crash protection based on multi-market breadth. Their principal goal is consistently positive returns,… Keep Reading

Are illiquid assets competitive as investments with liquid financial assets over the long run? In his March 2016 paper entitled “The Long-Term Returns to Durable Assets”, Christophe Spaenjers summarizes long-term returns for three types of illiquid assets since the start of the 20th century: Houses and farmland. Collectibles (art, stamps, wine and violins). Gold, silver and diamonds. He focuses on… Keep Reading

Are the backtests provided for alternative beta investment products representative of their future live performance? In their March 2016 paper entitled “Quantifying Backtest Overfitting in Alternative Beta Strategies”, Antti Suhonen, Matthias Lennkh and Fabrice Perez compare the backtested and live performances of alternative beta products offered by investment banks. The strategies underlying these products are formulaic and non-discretionary, designed to extract… Keep Reading

How should investors (particularly retirees) think about balancing short-term crash risk and long-term portfolio sustainability? In their March 2016 paper entitled “Asset Allocation with Short and Long Term Risk Objectives”, Peng Wang and Jon Spinney present a way to balance short-term and long-term portfolio performance risks. They consider portfolios that each month allocate all funds in fixed weights to a… Keep Reading

Can a typical investor exploit the high returns reported for Piotroski’s FSCORE strategy as applied to U.S. stocks? In their October 2015 paper entitled “The Piotroski F-Score: A Fundamental Value Strategy Revisited from an Investor’s Perspective”, Christopher Krauss, Tom Kruger and Daniel Beerstecher examine whether individual investors can exploit the American Association of Individual Investors’ (AAII) interpretation of this strategy (24% gross… Keep Reading

Is there a best measure of investor sentiment for predicting stock market returns? In his March 2016 paper entitled “Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Returns”, Lee Smales updates relationships between stock market/portfolio returns and five sentiment measures: CBOE Implied Volatility Index (VIX). Baker-Wurgler composite sentiment index (readily available only through 2012). American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) investor sentiment. University of… Keep Reading