Investing Research Articles

Under what conditions should speculators buy protective equity options when they expect realized stock market volatility to increase? In their September 2018 paper entitled “Being Right is Not Enough: Buying Options to Bet on Higher Realized Volatility”, Roni Israelov and Harsha Tummala analyze the relationship between: (1) long volatility return (delta-hedged options) and same-interval changes in realized… Keep Reading

Does recent research on active mutual fund performance challenge conventional wisdom that: (1) the average fund underperforms passive benchmarks on a net basis; and, (2) individual fund outperformance does not persist. In their September 2018 paper entitled “Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Active Management: A Review of the Past 20 Years of Academic Literature on… Keep Reading

Do active U.S. equity mutual funds beat their passive counterparts in recent years? In the September 2018 version of his paper entitled “The Historical Record on Active vs. Passive Mutual Fund Performance”, David Nanigian compares risk-adjusted annual performance of active versus passive U.S. equity mutual funds as categorized and monitored in the Morningstar Direct survivorship bias-free database. He measures… Keep Reading

Do crypto-asset trading volumes usefully predict returns? In the August 2018 draft of their paper entitled “Trading Volume in Cryptocurrency Markets”, Daniele Bianchi and Alexander Dickerson investigate the power of crypto-asset trading volumes to predict future returns. They calculate volumes and returns based on either 12-hour or 24-hour intervals. They process these inputs as follows: To detect… Keep Reading

Does the lunar cycle still (since our last look seven years ago) affect the behavior of investors/traders, and thereby influence stock returns? In the August 2001 version of their paper entitled “Lunar Cycle Effects in Stock Returns” Ilia Dichev and Troy Janes conclude that: “returns in the 15 days around new moon dates are about… Keep Reading

Brian Livingston introduces his 2018 book, Muscular Portfolios: The Investing Revolution for Superior Returns with Lower Risk, as follows: “What we laughingly call the financial ‘services’ industry is a cesspool filled with sharks intent on siphoning your money away and making it their own. The good news is that it is absolutely possible to grow your savings… Keep Reading

A subscriber proposed four alternative ways of timing the U.S. stock market based on simple moving averages (SMA) of the market price-earnings ratio (P/E), as follows: 5-Year Binary – hold stocks (cash) when P/E is below (above) its 5-year SMA. 10-Year Binary – hold stocks (cash) when P/E is below (above) its 10-year SMA. 15-Year Binary… Keep Reading

The Mojena Market Timing strategy (Mojena), developed and maintained by professor Richard Mojena, is a method for timing the broad U.S. stock market based on a combination of many monetary, fundamental, technical and sentiment indicators to predict changes in intermediate-term and long-term market trends. He adjusts the model annually to incorporate new data. Professor Mojena offers… Keep Reading

Is there a best way for investors to measure firm profitability for global stock selection? In their August 2018 paper entitled “Constructing a Powerful Profitability Factor: International Evidence”, Matthias Hanauer and Daniel Huber investigate which measure of firm profitability best predicts associated stock returns. They consider six measures: return on equity; gross profitability; operating profitability calculated in… Keep Reading

How, and how well, do institutional equity traders manage global stock trading frictions? In the April 2018 draft of their paper entitled “Trading Costs”, Andrea Frazzini, Ronen Israel and Tobias Moskowitz examine the real-world trading frictions of a large trader. They define trading frictions as the difference in results between a theoretical portfolio with zero frictions and a… Keep Reading