March 3, 2014 Momentum Investing
Does a stronger stock price trend, up or down, indicate a bigger momentum effect? In their February 2014 paper entitled “Trend Salience, Investor Behaviors and Momentum Profitability”, Paul Docherty and Gareth Hurst test variations of...
February 27, 2014 Technical Trading
Pairs traders often use a normalized price gap threshold of two standard deviations to generate signals for opening trades. Is there a better metric for generating these signals? In the January 2014 version of their...
February 26, 2014 Bonds, Economic Indicators
Do economic indicators usefully predict government bond returns? In the January 2014 version of their paper entitled “What Drives the International Bond Risk Premia?”, Guofu Zhou and Xiaoneng Zhu examine whether OECD-issued leading economic indicators...
February 25, 2014 Fundamental Valuation
Is the conventional wisdom that traders can scalp part of cash dividends by buying stocks just before ex-dividend day and selling just after reliable across exchanges? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Ex-Dividend Day Stock...
February 21, 2014 Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
Under what conditions is periodic rebalancing a successful “volatility harvesting” strategy? In his February 2014 paper entitled “Disentangling Rebalancing Return”, Winfried Hallerbach analyzes the return from periodic portfolio rebalancing by decomposing its effects into a...
February 19, 2014 Commodity Futures, Economic Indicators
Has easy access to commodity allocations via exchange-traded instruments (financialization) changed the way commodity prices interact with the economy? In his February 2014 paper entitled “Macroeconomic Determinants of Commodity Returns in Financialized Markets”, Adam Zaremba...
February 18, 2014 Short Selling
Does the cost of borrowing shares of a stock for shorting predict its future returns? In their January 2014 paper entitled “The Shorting Premium and Asset Pricing Anomalies”, Itamar Drechsler and Qingyi (Freda) Drechsler investigate...
February 14, 2014 Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
What drives the performance of risk parity asset allocation, and on what asset classes does it therefore work best? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Inter-Temporal Risk Parity: A Constant Volatility Framework for Equities and...
February 12, 2014 Momentum Investing, Volatility Effects
Is it possible to predict serial correlation (autocorrelation) of stock returns, and thereby enhance reversal and momentum strategies. In the January 2014 version of his paper entitled “The Information Content of Option Prices Regarding Future Stock...
February 10, 2014 Animal Spirits, Gold
Are gold price movements predictable? In his December 2013 paper entitled “Gold. The Bursting of a Bubble?”, Tim Verheyden assesses gold price predictability in two ways. First, he applies an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model...
February 7, 2014 Animal Spirits, Individual Investing
What individual investment behaviors are worst? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Which Investment Behaviors Really Matter for Individual Investors?”, Joachim Weber, Steffen Meyer, Benjamin Loos and Andreas Hackethal investigate relationships between the following ten tendencies...
February 6, 2014 Equity Options, Sentiment Indicators
Is the level of uncertainty among equity investors, as measured by the dispersion of S&P 500 Index option volume across strike prices, a useful predictor of stock market direction? In their January 2014 paper entitled...
February 5, 2014 Economic Indicators, Gold
What factors truly explain movements in the price of gold? In his January 2014 paper entitled “Facts and Fantasies about Gold”, Joachim Klement checks the validity of common explanations for changes in gold price. Specifically, he...
February 4, 2014 Individual Investing
Can investors quickly exploit surprising after-hours firm earnings/revenue announcements by trading after hours? In the January 2014 version of his paper entitled “Slow Price Adjustment to Public News in After-Hours Trading”, Jiasun Li investigates after-hours (4:00 pm...
January 31, 2014 Technical Trading
In the preface to his 2014 book entitled Investing with the Trend: A Rules-Based Approach to Money Management, author Greg Morris, Chairman of the Investment Committee and Chief Technical Analyst for Stadion Money Management LLC, states:...
January 28, 2014 Commodity Futures, Momentum Investing
Do trend following strategies widely used by managed futures funds break down during financial crises? In the December 2013 version of their paper entitled “Is This Time Different? Trend Following and Financial Crises”, Mark Hutchinson...
January 24, 2014 Individual Investing
In the introduction to his 2013 book entitled Get Rich Carefully, television personality and former hedge fund manger Jim Cramer describes it as: “…tailored for those who are befuddled about and distrustful of stocks but seek better...
January 22, 2014 Momentum Investing, Strategic Allocation
Is there a tractable way to combine momentum investing with Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT)? In their December 2013 paper entitled “Tactical MPT and Momentum: the Modern Asset Allocation (MAA)”, Wouter Keller and Hugo van Putten present a tactical, simplified,...
January 17, 2014 Big Ideas
Here is this Friday’s installment of Avoiding Investment Strategy Flame-outs, a short book we are previewing for subscribers. With this post, the book preview is complete. Chapter 9: “Getting Expert Advice (Delegating Strategy Development)” “Section 8-2 examines...
January 15, 2014 Momentum Investing
Readers have proposed several hedging/shorting variations for “Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy Performance”, as follows: (1) buy the top and hedge with (short) the bottom sector based on past six-month return; (2) buy the top...
January 14, 2014 Size Effect, Value Premium
Do country stock markets exhibit useful aggregate value and size metrics? In his December 2013 paper entitled “Macro Model for Macro Funds”, Adam Zaremba investigates whether macro size and value factors for country stock markets...
January 13, 2014 Equity Premium, Strategic Allocation
Is there a simple compromise between easy-to-implement market weights and more diversified equal sector and equal stock weights? In their December 2013 paper entitled “A Simple Diversified Portfolio Strategy”, Bernd Hanke and Garrett Quigley present a...
January 10, 2014 Big Ideas
Here is this Friday’s installment of Avoiding Investment Strategy Flame-outs, a short book we are previewing for subscribers. Chapter previews will continue for one more Friday. Chapter 8: “Two Analysis Regimes” “This chapter steps through two analysis...
January 9, 2014 Fundamental Valuation
Are “quality” country stock markets good places to invest? In his December 2013 paper entitled “Quality Investing and the Cross-Section of Country Returns”, Adam Zaremba investigates whether aggregate financial quality determines country stock market performance....
January 8, 2014 Fundamental Valuation
Why does the gross profitability stock-screening strategy work? In their December 2013 paper entitled “Factoring Profitability”, Michael Branch, Lisa Goldberg and Ran Leshem explore the drivers of the gross profitability strategy for U.S. stocks. Specifically,...