December 8, 2015 Commodity Futures, Currency Trading, Momentum Investing, Value Premium
How do the behaviors of time-series (absolute) and cross-sectional (relative) carry, momentum and value strategies differ? In the November 2015 version of their paper entitled “Dissecting Investment Strategies in the Cross Section and Time Series”, Jamil...
December 4, 2015 Momentum Investing
A subscriber requested evaluation of Jay’s Pure Momentum Sector Fund System, specified by originator Jay Kaeppel as follows: At the end of the first month, assign 20% weight to the five of the 40 Fidelity...
December 2, 2015 Animal Spirits
Does long-term media coverage of a firm exert predictable pressure on its stock price? In the November 2015 version of their paper entitled “Ninety Years of Media Coverage and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”, Alexander Hillert and...
November 30, 2015 Real Estate, Strategic Allocation
Which is worse with respect to sustaining retirement income: sacrificing potential investment portfolio growth early, or exposing mortgage debt to interest rates later? In his November 2015 paper entitled “Incorporating Home Equity into a Retirement Income Strategy”, Wade...
November 25, 2015 Animal Spirits
Does lack of search activity point to stocks that are out of favor and therefore undervalued? In their November 2015 paper entitled “In Search of Alpha-Trading on Limited Investor Attention”, Konstantin Storms, Julia Kapraun and Markus Rudolf develop and...
November 23, 2015 Individual Gurus, Strategic Allocation
What is Warren Buffett’s preferred fixed asset allocation, and how does it perform? In his October 2015 paper entitled “Buffett’s Asset Allocation Advice: Take It … With a Twist”, Javier Estrada examines Warren Buffett’s 2013 implied endorsement of a fixed allocation of 90%...
November 19, 2015 Bonds, Equity Premium
...while mid-single digits may be a reasonable rough estimate for the equity risk premium, there is not a generally accepted value for it or method of estimating it.
November 18, 2015 Miscellaneous
The submission deadlines for the 2016 Wagner Award, presented by the National Association for Active Investment Management (NAAIM) are December 15, 2015 for an Intent to Submit and February 29, 2016 for a final paper. Per the “Call...
November 18, 2015 Momentum Investing
Does “meaningful” short-term stock return momentum predict exploitable short-term price trends? In their October 2015 paper entitled “News Momentum”, Hao Jiang, Sophia Li and Hao Wang combine time-stamped firm news with high-frequency (15-minute) stock returns to identify stocks exhibiting news-driven momentum. Their news feed...
November 17, 2015 Equity Premium
What combination of factors best predicts stock market returns at a monthly frequency? In the October 2015 draft of their paper entitled “Comparing Asset Pricing Models”, Francisco Barillas and Jay Shanken apply a Bayesian procedure to compare all possible...
November 16, 2015 Individual Investing
Do individual investors exhibit good or bad timing in stock transactions of recent years? In the August 2015 version of their paper entitled “Fool’s Mate: What Does CHESS [Clearing House Electronic Subregister System] Tell Us About...
November 13, 2015 Calendar Effects
Do stocks worldwide generate most of their total return while the market is open or closed? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Making Money While You Sleep? Anomalies in International Day and Night Returns”, Kevin Aretz...
November 12, 2015 Strategic Allocation
Do both asset-level and portfolio-level risk management techniques enhance portfolio performance? In the October 2015 version of his paper entitled “Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Risk Management”, Valeriy Zakamulin investigates risk management across assets (relative weighting of risky assets) and risk...
November 11, 2015 Big Ideas
What are pros and cons of extending the definition of financial index beyond conventional market capitalization (buy-and-hold) weighting? In the October 2015 draft of his paper entitled “What Is an Index?”, Andrew Lo proposes that any portfolio satisfying three properties...
November 10, 2015 Economic Indicators, Gold
Is gold a consistent hedge against inflation? In their October 2015 preliminary paper entitled “Is Gold a Hedge Against Inflation? A Wavelet Time-Frequency Perspective”, Thomas Conlon, Brian Lucey and Gazi Salah Uddin examine the inflation-hedging properties of gold over...
November 9, 2015 Technical Trading
Does timing the U.S. stock market with moving averages work? In his October 2015 paper entitled “A Comprehensive Look at the Real-Life Performance of Moving Average Trading Strategies”, Valeriy Zakamulin employs a very long dataset to estimate...
November 6, 2015 Bonds
Are frontier government bonds useful as incremental diversifiers of diversified portfolios? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Frontier and Emerging Government Bond Markets”, Vanja Piljak and Laurens Swinkels examine the diversification value of U.S. dollar-denominated frontier government bonds...
November 5, 2015 Commodity Futures
Does the third moment (skewness) of commodity futures return distributions predict subsequent returns? In the October 2015 version of their paper entitled “Commodities as Lotteries: Skewness and the Returns of Commodity Futures”, Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Bart Frijns, Ana-Maria Fuertes...
November 4, 2015 Size Effect, Technical Trading
Do small capitalization stocks exploitably lag broad market trends? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Slow Trading and Stock Return Predictability”, Matthijs Lof and Matti Suominen investigate whether overall stock market trends predict variation in the size...
November 3, 2015 Momentum Investing, Volatility Effects
Are trend following (intrinsic or time series momentum) and risk parity complementary multi-class portfolio construction approaches? In his October 2015 paper entitled “Trend-Following, Risk-Parity and the Influence of Correlations”, Nick Baltas compares performances of inverse...
November 2, 2015 Momentum Investing, Strategic Allocation
Is there a simple way to improve the performance of conventional asset class target allocations by rotating to strength within classes based on Relative Strength Index (RSI)? In his September 2015 paper entitled “Momentum Investing and Asset...
October 30, 2015 Momentum Investing
Does the rate of change of return momentum (return acceleration) usefully predict stock returns? In their August 2015 paper entitled “The Acceleration Effect and Gamma Factor in Asset Pricing”, Diego Ardila-Alvarez, Zalan Forro and Didier Sornette compare the effectiveness...
October 29, 2015 Fundamental Valuation, Momentum Investing, Technical Trading, Value Premium
Is there a way to suppress the volatility and drawdowns of a mixed value and momentum stock strategy while retaining most of its benefit? In his September 2015 paper entitled “Learning to Play Offense and Defense: Combining Value...
October 28, 2015 Equity Options
How well do equity index option strategies work during crises? In his October 2015 paper entitled “The Performance of Equity Index Option Strategy Returns during the Financial Crisis”, Dominik Schulte tests the profitability of long and short equity...
October 27, 2015 Fundamental Valuation
Is fundamental valuation of stocks an inherently effective investment approach? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Fundamental Analysis Works”, Sohnke Bartram and Mark Grinblatt test whether fundamental valuation usefully predict stock performance. Each month, they estimate the...