Investing Research Articles

Does a cross-asset class, momentum-driven, simplified version of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) offer reliably strong performance over the long run? In their December 2014 paper entitled “A Century of Generalized Momentum; From Flexible Asset Allocations (FAA) to Elastic Asset Allocation (EAA)”, Wouter Keller and Adam Butler present an asset allocation strategy based on five concepts: MPT is a sound framework for… Keep Reading

Does diversification into alternative asset class investments, which may carry high management fees, help on a net basis? In the December 2014 version of their paper entitled “Fees Eat Diversification’s Lunch”, William Jennings and Brian Payne examine the diversification benefits of different asset classes after accounting for associated investment management fees. They focus on fees relative to allocation alpha, the expected return… Keep Reading

Does interest in, or concern about, financial markets as expressed in Internet searches predict stock market behavior? In the December 2014 revision of their paper entitled “Can We Predict the Financial Markets Based on Google’s Search Queries?”, Marcelo Perlin, Joao Caldeira, Andre Santos and Martin Pontuschka investigate whether changes in Google search frequency for finance-related words predict… Keep Reading

Does the currency carry trade, financing short-term deposits in currencies with high interest rates with short-term loans in currencies with low interest rates (or being long and short forward contracts in currencies with high and low interest rates) generate a reliably attractive return? In the November 2014 version of their paper entitled “Empirical Evidence on the… Keep Reading

Is firm profitability trend, or momentum, a useful indicator of future stock returns? In their December 2014 paper entitled “The Trend in Firm Profitability and the Cross Section of Stock Returns”, Ferhat Akbas, Chao Jiang and Paul Koch investigate the relationship between trend in firm profitability and stock returns, while controlling for level of profitability. They calculate gross profit quarterly as… Keep Reading

Should investors expect mutual fund managers to generate value via timely trades? In their November 2014 paper entitled “Do Funds Make More When They Trade More?”, Lubos Pastor, Robert Stambaugh and Lucian Taylor investigate the relationship between mutual fund turnover and performance. They measure mutual fund performance at a monthly frequency as gross fund return minus the return… Keep Reading

Does the expanding set of exchange-traded funds (ETF) support reliable replication (cloning) of future returns for some hedge funds? In their December 2014 paper entitled  “Smart Beta ETF Portfolios: Cloning Beta Active Hedge Funds”, Jun Duanmu, Yongjia Li and Alexey Malakhov test replication of top risk factor-driven (beta-active) hedge funds using portfolios of ETFs. The selected hedge funds perform… Keep Reading

A subscriber suggested evaluation of average investor allocation to stocks as “The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns”. For this evaluation, we test simple ways to time the broad U.S. stock market using the quarterly time series for average U.S. investor allocation to stocks as provided in the article. We assume that the… Keep Reading

Are stock betas calculated with price jumps (arguably derived from informed trading) more useful than those calculated conventionally (arguably dominated by noise trading)? In the December 2014 version of their paper entitled “Roughing Up Beta: Continuous vs. Discontinuous Betas, and the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns”, Tim Bollerslev, Sophia Zhengzi Li and Viktor Todorov compare the powers of standard or “smooth” stock betas and… Keep Reading

How big is the stock liquidity premium and does it subsume other variables widely used to estimate future returns? In their December 2014 paper entitled “A Comparative Analysis of Liquidity Measures”, Yuping Huang and Vasilios Sogiakas investigate the relationships of excess (relative to the risk-free rate) stock returns to three pairs of monthly liquidity metrics: Transaction cost: (1)… Keep Reading