Investing Research Articles

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/5/23 through 6/9/23. 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.

What characteristics of U.S. equity factor return series are most relevant to respective factor performance? In his May 2023 paper entitled “The Cross-Section of Factor Returns” David Blitz explores long-term average returns and market alphas, 60-month market betas and factor performance cyclicality for U.S. equity factors. He also assesses potentials of three factor rotation strategies:… Keep Reading

Do the stocks that dominate shareholder wealth-building (accounting for share price changes, dividends, repurchases/new share issuances and investor money flows) increasing concentrate within a small pool? In his May 2023 paper entitled “Shareholder Wealth Enhancement”, Hendrik Bessembinder identifies the stocks with the largest increases and largest decreases in shareholder wealth since 1926. He examines the… Keep Reading

Are the latest forms of artificial intelligence (AI) better at forecasting stock market returns than humans? In his February 2023 preliminary paper entitled “Surveying Generative AI’s Economic Expectations”, Leland Bybee summarizes results of monthly and quarterly forecasts by a large language model (ChatGPT-3.5) of U.S. stock market returns and 13 economic variables based on samples… Keep Reading

Why is trend following so persistently popular among investors? In their March 2022 paper entitled “A Guide to Trend Following Strategies”, Stuart Broadfoot and Daniel Leveau describe popular trend identification methods and provide an example of how to build/test a multi-asset class trend following strategy in four steps. Using trend following index data during January… Keep Reading

Should investors in low-cost mutual funds consider active ones? In his April 2023 paper entitled “Vanguard and Fidelity Domestic Active Stock Funds: Both Beat their Style Mimicking Vanguard Index Funds, & Vanguard Beats by More”, Edward Tower compares returns of active Vanguard and Fidelity stock mutual funds to those of style-mimicking portfolios of Vanguard index… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 5/30/23 through 6/2/23. 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.

Does the Turn-of-the-Month Effect, a concentration of positive stock market returns around the turns of calendar months, work across a broad set of asset classes. To investigate, we measure turn-of-the-month (TOTM) returns for the following nine asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF) used in the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” and the “Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy”: Invesco DB… Keep Reading

A reader inquired whether the Turn-of-the-Month Effect, a concentration of positive stock market returns around the turns of calendar months, works for U.S. stock market sectors. To investigate, we measure turn-of-the-month (TOTM) returns for the nine sector exchange-traded funds (ETF) defined by the Select Sector Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipts (SPDR), all of which have… Keep Reading

A subscriber asked about the performance of the 50-50  Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy (SACEVS) Best Value-Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS) Equal-Weighted (EW) Top 2 in combination with “Sell in May”. To investigate, we compare three alternatives: Best Value – EW Top 2 – holds 50-50 SACEVS Best Value-SACEMS EW Top 2 during all… Keep Reading