Investing Research Articles

What factors make asset class diversification work? To investigate empirically, we consider the following mix of exchange-traded funds (ETF) as asset class proxies (the same used in “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy”): PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC)iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM)iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA)SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)iShares Russell 1000 Index (IWB)iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM)SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR)iShares Barclays… Keep Reading

In the introduction to his 2014 book entitled Global Value: How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the Stock Market, author Mebane Faber, ponders: “Can we or can’t we predict when a bubble is occurring? Below we [try] to find an objective way to identify bubbles, avoid their popping, and invest in their aftermath.”… Keep Reading

How sensitive in a recent sample are outcomes from simple trend following rules to the length of the measurement interval used to detect a trend. To investigate, we consider two simple types of trend following rules as applied to the U.S. market: Hold a risky asset when its price is above its x-month simple moving average (SMAx) and… Keep Reading

Can traders extract an edge from sentiments expressed about stocks via public Internet message boards? In the March 2014 draft of their paper entitled “Investor Sentiment from Internet Message Postings and Predictability of Stock Returns”, Soon-Ho Kim and Dongcheol Kim investigate whether combined investor sentiment as expressed in Yahoo!Finance stock message boards predicts returns, volatilities and trading volumes of associated stocks. They… Keep Reading

Is past performance a useful indicator of future performance for some kinds of mutual funds? In their April 2014 paper entitled “Differences in Short-Term Performance Persistence by Mutual Fund Equity Class”, Larry Detzel and Andrew Detzel evaluate performance persistence among diversified U.S. equity mutual funds categorized per the Morningstar Equity Style Box: Large Value (LV), Large Blend (LB), Large… Keep Reading

Do prices exhibit persistently exploitable trends across asset classes all the time? In their April 2014 paper entitled “Two Centuries of Trend Following”, Y. Lemperiere, C. Deremble, P. Seager, M. Potters and J. P. Bouchaud examine risk-adjusted performance of a trend following strategy across four asset classes (commodities, currencies, stock indexes, bonds) over very long sample periods. They generate… Keep Reading

Does the reward for taking the risk of holding stocks exhibit any long-term trend? In his April 2014 presentation package entitled “The Incredible Shrinking ‘Realized’ Equity Risk Premium”, Claude Erb examines the trend in the realized U.S. equity risk premium (ERP) since 1925. He defines this ERP as the retrospective difference in 10-year yield between the broad… Keep Reading

Are simple moving averages (SMA) effective in generating signals for short-term currency trading? In the April 2014 draft of his paper entitled “ANANTA: A Systematic Quantitative FX Trading Strategy”, Nicolas Georges investigates the effectiveness of fast (2-day) and slow (15-day) SMAs as indicators of currency exchange rate evolutions when applied to ten G10 currency pairs… Keep Reading

Does stock market timing based on simple moving average (SMA) and time-series (intrinsic or absolute) momentum strategies really work? In the November 2013 version of his paper entitled “The Real-Life Performance of Market Timing with Moving Average and Time-Series Momentum Rules”, Valeriy Zakamulin tests realistic long-only implementations of these strategies with estimated trading frictions. The… Keep Reading

Do Morningstar’s analyst ratings predict which mutual funds will do best? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Going for Gold: An Analysis of Morningstar Analyst Ratings”, Will Armstrong, Egemen Genc and Marno Verbeek examine the performance of mutual funds after Morningstar assigns analyst ratings to them. Morningstar initiated these substantially qualitative ratings (Gold, Silver, Bronze,… Keep Reading