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Investing Research Articles

3489 Research Articles

U.S. Stock Market Performance by Intra-year Phase

The full-year Trading Calendar indicates that the U.S. stock market has three phases over the calendar year, corresponding to calendar year trading days 1-84 (January-April), 85-210 (May-October) and 211-252 (November-December). What are typical stock market returns and return variabilities for these phases? Using daily S&P 500 Index closes from the end of December 1927 through… Keep Reading

Weekly Summary of Research Findings: 1/2/24 – 1/5/25

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 1/2/24 through 1/5/24. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to your investing needs. Subscribers: To receive these weekly digests via email, click here to sign up for our mailing list.

Simple Ways to Beat Equal-weighted Stock Portfolios

Academic studies of stock portfolio optimization often use an equal-weighted (EW) strategy as benchmark. Are there simple EW enhancements that researchers ought to consider instead? In their December 2023 paper entitled “Outperforming Equal Weighting”, Antonello Cirulli and Patrick Walker test three sets of enhanced long-only EW portfolios relying solely on past returns: Momentum-enhanced EW –… Keep Reading

Testing the SMA21-to-SMA200 Ratio on the S&P 500 Index

“Distance Between Fast and Slow Price SMAs and Stock Returns” finds that extreme distance between a 21-trading day simple moving average (SMA21) and 200-trading day simple moving average (SMA200), as applied to individual U.S. stock price series, may be a useful stock return predictor. “Distance Between Fast and Slow Price SMAs and Country Stock Index… Keep Reading

Distance Between Fast and Slow Price SMAs and Country Stock Index Returns

“Distance Between Fast and Slow Price SMAs and Stock Returns” finds that extreme distance between a 21-trading day simple moving average (SMA) and 200-trading day SMA, as applied to individual U.S. stock price series, may be a useful return predictor. Does this finding apply to non-U.S. stock market indexes? In their December 2023 paper entitled… Keep Reading

Historical U.S. Equity Returns for a 5-Year Horizon

A subscriber asked about the historical experience (distribution of outcomes) of an investor with a 5-year horizon (holding period). To investigate we consider returns for 5-year intervals rolled annually at the end of the year based on: Annual nominal and real total returns for Shiller’s long-run S&P Composite Index during 1871-2022, offering 146 overlapping 5-year… Keep Reading

Weekly Summary of Research Findings: 12/26/23 – 12/29/23

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 12/26/23 through 12/29/23. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to your investing needs. Subscribers: To receive these weekly digests via email, click here to sign up for our mailing list.

Optimal SACEMS Lookback Interval Update

How sensitive is performance of the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS) to choice of momentum calculation lookback interval, and what interval works best? To investigate, we generate gross compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and maximum drawdowns (MaxDD) for SACEMS Top 1, equally weighted (EW) EW Top 2 and EW Top 3 portfolios over lookback… Keep Reading

A Few Notes on The Missing Billionaires

In their 2023 book, The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions, authors Victor Haghani and James White seek “to give you a practical framework, consistent with the consensus of university finance textbooks, for making good financial decisions that are right for you. Good decisions will take account of your personal circumstances, financial preferences,… Keep Reading

Distance Between Fast and Slow Price SMAs and Stock Returns

Does degree of difference between fast and slow simple moving averages (SMA) for a stock price series predict future stock return? In the December 2023 revision of their paper entitled “Moving Average Distance as a Predictor of Equity Returns”, Doron Avramov, Guy Kaplanski and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam test distance between a 21-day SMA (SMA21) and 200-day… Keep Reading