Strategic Allocation

The “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” each month allocates all funds to the one of the following eight asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF), or cash, with the highest total return over the past five months:

PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM)
iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA)
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
iShares Russell 1000 Index (IWB)
iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM)
SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR)
iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
3-month Treasury bills (Cash)

“Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy Robustness/Sensitivity Tests” shows that, among uniform ranking intervals, five months is optimal. Citing the optimality of a three-month ranking interval in “Simple Debt Class Mutual Fund Momentum Strategy”, a subscriber inquired whether using a three-month ranking interval just for TLT might improve Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy performance. To investigate more generally, we compute net terminal values for 108 variations of the strategy by letting the ranking interval for each asset range from one to 12 months, while holding the ranking interval for all other assets at five months. In order to compare ranking intervals of different lengths, we use the average total return per month for ranking. For example, the average monthly total return for a five-month ranking interval is the five-month total return divided by five. Using monthly dividend-adjusted closes for the asset class proxies and the yield for Cash during July 2002 (or inception if not available then) through May 2014 (141 months), we find that:

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A subscriber suggested an alternative to the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” that weights asset class ETFs according to five-month past return ranking (such as 35-25-20-10-4-3-2-1) rather than allocating all funds to the winner. Do the diversification benefits of this alternative outweigh the loss of momentum purity? To investigate, we return to the following eight asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF), plus cash:

PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM)
iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA)
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
iShares Russell 1000 Index (IWB)
iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM)
SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR)
iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
3-month Treasury bills (Cash)

As one benchmark, we allocate all funds at the end of each month to the asset class ETF or cash with the highest total return over the past five months (5-1). As another benchmark, we maintain an equal-weighted (EW), monthly rebalanced portfolio of all nine asset classes. As alternatives, we test two momentum rank-weighted (RW), linearly-scaled combinations of all nine classes, one steep across ranks and one shallow. We also test EW combinations of the Top 5, Top 4, Top 3 and Top 2 momentum ranks. Using monthly adjusted closing prices for the asset class proxies and the yield for Cash over the period February 2006 (the earliest all ETFs are available) through May 2014 (100 months), we find that: Keep Reading

We have updated the detail at “Momentum Strategy” to incorporate the historical data changes described in “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy Data Changes”. The principal effects are to decrease the performance of the Top 1 portfolio and increase the performance of the Top 2 portfolio.

Over the coming week, we will accordingly update much of the supporting research listed at “Momentum Strategy”.

Does the relative performance of 10-year U.S. Treasuries and 30-year U.S. Treasuries offer a useful risk-on/risk-off regime change signal? In their February 2014 paper entitled “An Intermarket Approach to Tactical Risk Rotation Using the Signaling Power of Treasuries to Generate Alpha and Enhance Asset Allocation” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2014 Wagner Award third place winner), Michael Gayed and Charles Bilello examine whether the relationship between the monthly total returns of the 10-year and 30-year Treasuries usefully indicate when to hold (or tilt toward) Treasuries versus stocks. They reason that informed investors migrate toward intermediate-term (long-term) Treasuries when they anticipate strong (weak) economic conditions. Therefore, the relative strength of 10-year and 30-year Treasuries signals when to take an aggressive or defensive investment posture. Using monthly total returns for 10-year and 30-year Treasuries and for the broad U.S. stock market during April 1977 through December 2013, they find that: Keep Reading

What factors make asset class diversification work? To investigate empirically, we consider the following mix of exchange-traded funds (ETF) as asset class proxies (the same used in “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy”):

PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM)
iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA)
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
iShares Russell 1000 Index (IWB)
iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM)
SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR)
iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
3-month Treasury bills (Cash)

We calculate the monthly gross return-risk ratio (average monthly return divided by standard deviation of monthly returns) for an equally weighted, monthly rebalanced portfolio of all nine asset class proxies. We then recalculate the return-risk ratio nine times, each time excluding one of the assets, and relate the resulting return-risk ratios to three characteristics of the respectively excluded assets: (1) average monthly return; (2) standard deviation of monthly returns; and, (3) average (pairwise) cross-correlation of monthly returns with the other eight assets. The objective is to determine whether any of these three characteristics explain asset contribution to diversification benefit.  We ignore trading frictions associated with monthly rebalancing, which would be similar for all combinations. Using dividend-adjusted monthly returns for the above nine asset class proxies during September 2006 (so that monthly returns for all assets are available in equal-weight calculations) through April 2014 (92 monthly returns), we find that: Keep Reading

How well do long-short stock strategies work, after accounting for all costs? In their February 2014 paper entitled “Assessing the Cost of Accounting-Based Long-Short Trades: Should You Invest a Billion Dollars in an Academic Strategy?”, William Beaver, Maureen McNichols and Richard Price examine the net attractiveness of several long-short strategies as stand-alone investments (as for a hedge fund) and as diversifiers of the market portfolio. They also consider long-only versions of these strategies. Specifically, they consider five anomalies exposed by the extreme tenths (deciles) of stocks sorted by:

1. Book-to-Market ratio (BM) measured annually.
2. Operating Cash Flow (CF) measured annually as a percentage of average assets.
3. Accruals (AC) measured annually as earnings minus cash flow as a percentage of average assets.
4. Unexpected Earnings (UE) measured as year-over-year percentage change in quarterly earnings.
5. Change in Net Operating Assets (ΔNOA) measured annually as a percentage of average assets.

For strategies other than UE, they reform strategy portfolios (long the “good” decile and short the “bad” decile) annually at the end of April using accounting data from the prior fiscal year. For UE, they reform the portfolio at the ends of March, June, September and December using prior-quarter data. They highlight cost of capital, financing costs and rebates received on short positions, downside risk and short-side contribution to performance. They assume that the same amount of capital supports either a long-only portfolio, or a portfolio with equal long and short sides (with the long side satisfying Federal Reserve Regulation T collateral requirements for the short side). They account for shorting costs as fees for initiating short positions plus an ongoing collateral rate set at least as high as the federal funds rate, offset by a rebate of 0.25% per year interest on short sale proceeds. They estimate stock trading costs as the stock-by-stock percentage bid-ask spread. They consider two samples (including delistings): (1) all U.S. listed stocks; and, (2) the 20% of stocks with the largest market capitalizations. Using accounting data as described above for all non-ADR firms listed on NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ for fiscal years 1992 through 2011, and associated monthly stock returns during May 1993 through April 2013, they find that: Keep Reading

Under what conditions is periodic rebalancing a successful “volatility harvesting” strategy? In his February 2014 paper entitled “Disentangling Rebalancing Return”, Winfried Hallerbach analyzes the return from periodic portfolio rebalancing by decomposing its effects into a volatility return and a dispersion discount. He defines:

• Rebalancing return as the difference in (geometric) growth rates between periodically rebalanced and buy-and-hold portfolios.
• Volatility return as the difference in growth rates between a periodically rebalanced portfolio and the equally weighted average growth rate of its component assets.
• Dispersion discount as the difference in growth rates between a buy-and-hold portfolio and the equally weighted average growth rate of portfolio assets.

Based on mathematical derivations with some approximations, he concludes that: Keep Reading

What drives the performance of risk parity asset allocation, and on what asset classes does it therefore work best? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Inter-Temporal Risk Parity: A Constant Volatility Framework for Equities and Other Asset Classes”, Romain Perchet, Raul Leote de Carvalho, Thomas Heckel and Pierre Moulin employ simulations and backtests to explore the conditions/asset classes for which a periodically rebalanced risk parity asset allocation enhances portfolio performance. Specifically, they examine contemporaneous interactions between risk parity performance and each of return-volatility relationship, return volatility clustering and fatness of return distribution tails (kurtosis). They then compare different ways of predicting volatility for risk parity implementation. Finally, they backtest volatility prediction/risk parity allocation effectiveness separately for stock, commodity, high-yield corporate bond, investment-grade corporate bond and government bond indexes (each versus the risk-free asset). They optimize volatility prediction model parameters annually based on an expanding window of historical data. They forecast volatility based on one-year rolling historical daily return data. Using daily total returns in U.S. dollars for the S&P 500 Index during 1980 through 2012 and for the Russell 1000, MSCI Emerging Market, S&P Commodities, U.S. High Yield Bond, U.S. Corporate Investment Grade Bond and U.S. 10-Year Government Bond indexes and the 3-month U.S. Dollar LIBOR rate (as the risk-free rate) during January 1988 through December 2012, they find that: Keep Reading

Is there a tractable way to combine momentum investing with Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT)? In their December 2013 paper entitled “Tactical MPT and Momentum: the Modern Asset Allocation (MAA)”, Wouter Keller and Hugo van Putten present a tactical, simplified, long-only version of MPT that applies momentum to estimate future asset returns. Specifically, they:

1. Make MPT tactical by using short historical intervals to estimate future asset returns (rate of return, or absolute momentum), return volatilities (based on daily returns) and return correlations (based on daily returns), assuming that behaviors over a short historical interval will materially persist during the next month.
2. Exclude from the portfolio any assets with negative estimated returns (i.e., negative returns over the specified historical interval).
3. Simplify correlation calculations by relating daily historical returns for each asset to those for a single index (the equally weighted average returns for all assets) rather than to those for all other assets separately.
4. Dampen any errors in rapidly changing asset return, volatility and correlation estimates by “shrinking” them toward their respective averages across all assets in the universe, and dampen the predicted market volatility by “shrinking” it toward zero.

They reform the MAA portfolio monthly at the first close. Their baseline historical interval for estimation of all variables is four months (84 trading days). Their baseline shrinkage factor for all variables is 50%. Their benchmark is the equally weighted (EW) “market” of all assets, rebalanced monthly. They assume a one-way trading friction of 0.1%. They consider a range of portfolio performance metrics: annualized return, annual volatility, maximum drawdown, Sharpe ratio, Omega ratio and Calmar ratio. Using daily dividend-adjusted prices for assets allocated to nine universes (of seven to 130 assets, generally consisting of asset class proxy funds) during November 1997 through mid-November 2013, they find that: Keep Reading

Is there a simple compromise between easy-to-implement market weights and more diversified equal sector and equal stock weights? In their December 2013 paper entitled “A Simple Diversified Portfolio Strategy”, Bernd Hanke and Garrett Quigley present a stock portfolio construction approach that blends market weights, equal stock weights and equal sector weights. The objectives of the approach (relative to market weights) are: (1) higher returns (by capturing more of the diversification premium); (2) lower risk (via increased diversification); and, (3) competitive capacity and rebalancing frictions (by limiting the tilt toward small, illiquid stocks). In testing this approach, they form and rebalance annually regional (U.S., European and Japanese) portfolios of relatively liquid stocks. They ignore rebalancing frictions. They define sectors via the broadest Global Industry Classification Standard level (ten sectors). Using total (dividend-reinvested) returns, market capitalizations and sector memberships for a broad sample of relatively liquid stocks during January 1992 through March 2013, they find that: Keep Reading