Investing Research Articles

What are the best ways to apply backtesting in the development of investment strategies? In their July 2024 paper entitled “The Three Types of Backtests”, Jacques Joubert, Dragan Sestovic, Illya Barziy, Walter Distaso and Marcos Lopez de Prado offer guidance on backtesting best practices by reviewing: Strengths and weaknesses of the three main types of… Keep Reading

What is the distribution of U.S. common stock outcomes over the past century? In the July 2024 draft of his paper entitled “Which U.S. Stocks Generated the Highest Long-Term Returns?”, Hendrik Bessembinder presents cumulative returns and compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for all 29,078 publicly listed U.S. common stocks in the Center for Research in… Keep Reading

Does the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) exhibit exploitable seasonality? To investigate, we calculate by calendar month and compare average monthly: Change in VIX. Return for ProShares VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (VIXY). Return for ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY). Using monthly closes of VIX since January 1990, monthly split-adjusted closes for  for VIXY since… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/29/24 through 8/2/24. 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.

Is conventional wisdom that aggregate retail investor sentiment is a contrary indicator of future stock market return correct? To investigate, we examine the sentiment expressed by members of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) via a weekly survey of members. This survey asks AAII members each week (Thursday through Wednesday): “Do you feel the… Keep Reading

Does Michael Farr, CEO and founder of Farr, Miller & Washington, offer good stock picks via his annual CNBC articles identifying the best 10 stocks for the next year? To investigate, we take his picks for 2022, 2023 and 2024, calculate the associated annual (first half only for 2024) total returns for each stock and… Keep Reading

Does subjective technical analysis truly add value? In their June 2024 paper entitled “The Power Of Price Action Reading”, Carlo Zarattini and Marios Stamatoudis investigate the value added to simple trading rules by the discretionary judgments of an experienced technician for a sample of stocks with: (1) overnight gaps up over 6%; (2) minimum opening… Keep Reading

Are stock quality strategies, as implemented by exchange-traded funds (ETF), attractive? To investigate, we consider five ETFs, all currently available (from oldest to youngest): Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF (SPHQ) – seeks to track performance of S&P 500 stocks with the highest quality scores based on firm return on equity, accruals ratio and financial leverage… Keep Reading

A subscriber observed and asked: “Many Bogleheads at Vanguard prefer a buy and hold portfolio of 50% SPY, 25% each BND and EFA [rebalanced annually]. How does this compare to your current strategy? And how does it compare to buy and hold QQQ?” To compare, we compute gross monthly returns for the following six strategies:… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 7/22/24 through 7/26/24. 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.