Investing Research Articles

We evaluate here the market commentary of Ben Zacks over the period June 2002 through January 2005. Ben Zacks is a co-founder of Zacks Investment Research and Senior Strategist and Portfolio Manager at Zacks Wealth Management Group. Since January 2005, Zacks.com has discontinued making his regular commentary publicly available (and removed his past commentary). The table… Keep Reading

…stock message boards accelerate information dissemination and maybe analysis, but they do not reliably reveal new information (lots of opinions and little or no private information). Message board sentiment does not predict stock returns.

…the claimed past performance of the New America Index is probably overstated with respect to realistic expectations for actual trading of the stocks in it.

…investors/traders should consider a courtroom-like discipline in determining the value of a guru’s advice. It may be that very few stock market gurus would qualify as expert witnesses.

…even sophisticated hedge fund investors could improve their returns by relying more on homework and less on gurudom.

…the significant concentration of excess stock market returns around the turns of calendar months is a long-standing and persistent effect.

…knowledgeable humans applying sophisticated programming techniques may be able to beat the market.

…VIX signals are useful for short-term switching between small-capitalization and large-capitalization stock indexes, especially when VIX is historically high.

…even though they outperform in aggregate, less than half of equity hedge funds outperform broad stock market indexes.

…the author forecasts annual worldwide equity returns in the high single digits over the coming decade.