Investing Research Articles

Who wins and who loses among equity investors, and why? In the December 2008 version of their paper entitled “Who Win and Who Lose Among Individual Investors?”, Kingsley Fong, David Gallagher and Adrian Lee compare the trading performances of three investor groups, those trading through: (1) institutional brokers; (2) discount retail brokers; and, (3) non-discount… Keep Reading

…investors may be able to exploit a stock price effect by focusing on the associated abnormally positive return during the first calendar quarter.

…adjusting asset class allocations according to key economic indicators may help investors manage risk and/or boost long-term returns.

…even though S&P 500 index timing rules based on fundamental indicators and investor sentiment indicators might significantly beat a buy-and-hold benchmark when evaluated in isolation, this outperformance generally evaporates after correcting for data snooping bias. In other words, luck is the dominant differentiator of rule performance.

…finance and economics professors on average currently estimate that investors require an annual excess return from equities in the range 5% to 7%.

Do individuals who use investment advisors achieve higher returns than those who do not? Two closely related papers entitled “Investment Advice and Individual Investor Portfolio Performance” of January 2009 by Marc Kramer and “The Impact of Financial Advisors on Individual Investor Portfolio Performance” of March 2012 by Marc Kramer and Robert Lensink address this question…. Keep Reading

…the way to survive the fat-tailedness of investment returns is through limiting exposure to such investments.

…evidence from this 19th century test supports belief in the persistence of the size effect and the value premium for equities.

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the intermediate-term S&P 500 index calls of Tim Ord via MarketWeb since 1/20/06. Tim Ord is is president, editor and publisher of The Ord Oracle, “devoted to the practice of supply and demand trading” using “a new kind of charting program designed for showing supply and demand… Keep Reading

…the portfolio returns of “Strategy Lab” participants since late 2001 vary widely, but aggregate results offer some support for the belief that experts on average can consistently outperform the broad stock market.