Investing Research Articles

Have investors overwhelmed commercial traders in commodity futures markets, thereby depressing the value of commodity futures as a diversifier of stocks and bonds? In his November 2013 papers entitled “Implications of Financialization for Commodity Investors: The Case of Roll Yields” and “Implications of Financialization for Strategic Asset Allocation: The Case of Correlations”, Adam Zaremba examines the effects… Keep Reading

How can retirees optimally segregate reliable income from risky growth? In their November 2011 paper entitled “The Floor-Leverage Rule for Retirement”, flagged by a subscriber, Jason Scott and John Watson examine a retirement allocation strategy that strictly segregates safe income-generating assets (“riskless” bonds) from potentially income-boosting risky assets (stocks). They designate the safe allocation as… Keep Reading

What do insiders regard as red flags for corporate earnings manipulation? In their May 2013 paper entitled “Earnings Quality: Evidence from the Field”, Ilia Dichev, John Graham, Campbell Harvey and Shiva Rajgopal report earnings quality insights from Chief Financial Officers (CFO) of publicly owned companies via 169 responses to an anonymous online survey, plus 12 telephone… Keep Reading

Iterative testing of strategies on a set of data introduces snooping bias, such that a winning (losing) strategy is to some degree lucky (unlucky). Sharing of strategies across a community of researchers carries the luck forward, with accretion of additional bias from testing by subsequent researchers. Is there a rigorous way to account for this… Keep Reading

For an illiquid asset class such as art, many individual assets do not trade within commonly used return measurement intervals (such as a year). When a relatively few works of art account for most of the trading, measured returns derive mostly from these few works. If the returns for frequently and seldom traded art differ,… Keep Reading

Do emerging markets still deserve their reputation as a portfolio-diversifying asset class? In the October 2013 version of their paper entitled “Emerging Equity Markets in a Globalizing World”, Geert Bekaert and Campbell Harvey examine whether, given the dramatic globalization of the past 20 years, it still make sense to classify country equity markets as “developed”… Keep Reading

Do funds that have Ph.D. holders in key positions outperform those that do not? In their October 2013 paper entitled “What a Difference a Ph.D. Makes: More than Three Little Letters”, Ranadeb Chaudhuri, Zoran Ivkovich, Joshua Pollet and Charles Trzcinka investigate whether institutional money management firms that rely on key personnel holding Ph.D. degrees outperform… Keep Reading

Do stocks of firms that initiate buybacks (open market stock repurchases) tend to appreciate due to elevated takeover risk? In the October 2013 draft of their paper entitled “The Timing and Source of Long-run Returns Following Repurchases”, Leonce Bargeron, Alice Bonaime and Shawn Thomas investigate the timing and source of the abnormal return associated with… Keep Reading

Is there exploitable feedback between stock returns and behaviors of associated options due to concentration of informed traders in one market or the other? In the October 2013 version of their paper entitled “The Joint Cross Section of Stocks and Options”, Byeong-Je An, Andrew Ang, Turan Baliand and Nusret Cakici investigate lead-lag relationships between stock… Keep Reading

Is producing real estate (farmland, timberland, energy delivery infrastructure and commercial properties) a good investment? In his May 2013 paper entitled “The Performance of Direct Investments in Real Assets: Natural Resources, Infrastructure and Commercial Real Estate”, Martijn Cremers investigates the performance of direct investments in natural resources (farmland and timberland), energy infrastructure Master Limited Partnerships… Keep Reading