Do the stocks of small firms consistently outperform those of larger companies? If so, why, and can investors/traders exploit this tendency? These blog entries relate to the size effect.
February 2, 2006 - Size Effect, Value Premium
Do long-term value investors outperform? In their paper entitled “Do Investors Capture the Value Premium?”, Todd Houge and Tim Loughran seek the answer to this question by examining groups of value and growth equity indexes, mutual funds and individual stocks over long periods. They conclude that: Keep Reading
December 26, 2005 - Size Effect
In their December 2005 paper entitled “Information and Prospects: Investment Opportunities and Market Efficiency in the Small-Cap Segment”, German Espinosa and Robert Veszteg examine the value of analysts as guides for selecting stocks that amplify the small firm effect. Is it better to search independently for “hidden gems” or to focus instead on small stocks followed by analysts? Are those analysts one step ahead in the relatively slow diffusion process for new information about small firms? The authors test the hypothesis that small firms with unusually large analyst followings tend to be those with the best prospects. Using monthly data on financial analyst coverage and returns for the stocks of U.S. and Canadian markets between June 1996 and June 2004, they find that: Keep Reading
November 7, 2005 - Calendar Effects, Size Effect
In their October 2005 paper entitled “The January Effect”, Mark Haug and Mark Hirschey examine the persistence of the January effect (abnormally high rates of return during the month of January). Using broad samples of value-weighted and equally-weighted returns spanning 1802-2004 for large-capitalization stocks and 1927-2004 for small-capitalization stocks, they conclude that: Keep Reading
March 26, 2005 - Size Effect, Technical Trading
In a March 2005 update of his paper entitled “Simple Technical Trading Strategies: Returns, Risk and Size”, Satyajit Chandrashekar investigates the effectiveness of simple moving average technical trading strategies across ten market capitalization size deciles for the period 1963-2002. He finds that: Keep Reading
March 15, 2005 - Size Effect
In his December 2004 paper, Jason Hsu shows that: “Cap-Weighted Portfolios Are Sub-optimal Portfolios”. Noting that over $10 trillion are currently invested in passive capitalization-weighted indices, he examines data from 1962-2003 to show that: Keep Reading