Investing Research Articles

Do stocks of homebuilders, whose sales are particularly sensitive to interest rate changes, reliably lead the overall stock market? To check, we look at lead-lag relationships between monthly returns for SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) and for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY). Using monthly dividend-adjusted returns for XHB and SPY during February 2006 (inception… Keep Reading

How should retail investors view funds offering private equity opportunities? In his July 2025 paper entitled “Private Markets for the People? Or Just More People for Private Markets?”, Ludovic Phalippou assesses the push to expand private equity access to retail investors. He highlights risks embedded in current product design. Based on review of such offerings,… Keep Reading

Speculator level of interest (attention) is plausibly key to bitcoin price behavior. Does the level of online searching for “bitcoin” as a proxy for attention usefully predict bitcoin return? To investigate, we examine interactions between monthly worldwide search intensity for “bitcoin” as measured by Google Trends to represent speculator attention and monthly bitcoin returns. Using… Keep Reading

The Inflation Forecast now incorporates actual total and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for July 2025. The actual total (core) inflation rate is about the same as (about the same as) forecasted.

Traders can buy and sell bitcoin any day of the week. Do bitcoin returns exhibit anomalies by day of the week, perhaps especially because of weekend trading? To investigate, we calculate (1) average return and return variability for each day of the week; (2) gross cumulative return for holding bitcoin only one day of the… Keep Reading

Do active investment managers as a group successfully time the stock market? The National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) is an association of registered investment advisors. “NAAIM member firms who are active money managers are asked each week to provide a number which represents their overall equity exposure at the market close on a specific day… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 8/4/25 through 8/8/25. 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.

Can investors profitably trade the effects of leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds (LETF) share creation and redemption on prices? In his July 2025 paper entitled “Am I the Patsy? LETF Issuance is Signal, Not Noise: How Trading LETFs a Day Late can make you a Dollar Richer”, Rob Bezdjian introduces the “Day Late-Dollar Richer” (DLDR)… Keep Reading

How do stocks of gold miners perform compared to gold itself? In their July 2025 paper entitled “Gold Shares Underperform Gold Bullion”, Dirk Baur, Lichoo Tay and Allan Trench examine the performance of gold miners relative to gold. They use VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) as a proxy for gold miners and SPDR Gold Shares… Keep Reading

How do hedge fund managers think about fundamental analysis versus technical analysis in managing their stock portfolios? In his July 2025 paper entitled “Portfolio Construction: Blending Fundamental and Technical Analysis”, Gregory Blotnick describes the interplay between fundamental and technical analyses in long/short equity portfolio construction from the perspective of a hedge fund with a high… Keep Reading