Investing Research Articles

Can machine learning usefully inform daily crypto-asset trading? In their August 2021 paper entitled “Boosting Cryptocurrency Return Prediction”, Ilias Filippou, David Rapach and Christoffer Thimsen apply the XGBoost algorithm to decision trees to generate next-day forecasts of bitcoin and Ethereum excess returns. They consider 39 potential predictor inputs, including: valuation ratios (network value-to-transactions, addresses-to-network value… Keep Reading

Does actual performance support the view that university endowments are exemplary stewards of multi-asset class portfolios? In his November 2021 paper entitled “The Modern Endowment Story: A Ubiquitous U.S. Equity Risk Premium”, Richard Ennis re-examines aggregate allocations and performance of U.S. educational endowments. Specifically, he: Estimates effective aggregate endowment asset class allocations over different recent… Keep Reading

Does over $1 trillion in crypto-assets (having no fundamental value and paying no interest, but trading freely) now held by Americans represent new wealth? In his brief June 2021 paper entitled “Bubble Wealth”, Bradford Cornell addresses the apparent paradox between the view of economic theory (no new wealth) and the fact that those holding crypto-assets… Keep Reading

Are there plausible ways to forecast the price of bitcoin? In their March 2021 paper entitled “Bitcoin Price Forecast Using Quantitative Models”, Daniele Bernardi and Ruggero Bertelli examine fundamental bitcoin value from four perspectives: Stock-to-Flow modeling that addresses evolving scarcity based on quantity of bitcoin already present in the world (Stock) and quantity of bitcoin… Keep Reading

Since May 2006, the ADP National Employment Report has offered a monthly estimate of U.S. nonfarm private sector employment growth using actual payroll data. The report is designed “to predict private-sector employment prior to the release of the CES [Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Current Employment Statistics survey] report.” Do the ADP estimates predict U.S…. Keep Reading

The monthly Cass Freight Index is a “measure of North American freight volumes [shipments] and expenditures… Data within the Index includes all domestic freight modes and is derived from $28 billion in freight transactions processed by Cass annually on behalf of its client base of hundreds of large shippers. These companies represent a broad sampling of… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 11/8/21 through 11/12/21. 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.

A subscriber asked about performance of Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS) hedge portfolios, which each month buy the asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the SACEMS universe with the highest past returns and sell (short) those with the lowest. To investigate, we look at three hedge portfolios: Top 1 – Bottom 1: long… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 11/1/21 through 11/5/21. 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 past performance of Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) stocks derive mostly from shift in demand from other stocks to ESG stocks? In his September 2021 paper entitled “Flow-Driven ESG Returns”, Philippe van der Beck examines whether flow of investor dollars toward ESG mutual funds explains aggregate performance of ESG stocks, as follows: Construct… Keep Reading