Expected Returns to Green Stocks
The past decade has seen a dramatic growth in sustainable investing—applying environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria to investment strategies. Investments considered environmentally friendly are often referred to as “green,” while “brown” denotes the opposite. Important questions for investors are: What are the expected returns to green stocks? What does their past performance tell us about their future expected returns? We begin by looking at what economic theory tells us our expectations should be.
Measuring Geopolitical Risk
Although geopolitical risk has traditionally been approached from a qualitative aspect, what makes it a novel risk is the application of innovative techniques to measure it.
The Performance of Multi-Factor Long-Short Portfolios in Various Economic Regimes
To determine if a multi-factor approach has provided diversification benefits in terms of exposure to economic cycle risks, the research team at Counterpoint evaluated returns to multifactor long-short strategies, stocks, and 1-month T-bills in a variety of economic conditions (recession or no recession, high or no high inflation, and stagflation) over the period July 1963-August 2022.
Book Review: The Bogle Effect by Eric Balchunas
This is a review of Eric Balchunas's book "The Bogle Effect: How John Bogle and Vanguard Turned Wall Street Inside Out and Saved Investors Trillions."
Bigger is Not Always Better in Asset Management
Pastor, Stambaugh, and Taylor (2015) and Zhu (2018) provide significant evidence of decreasing returns to scale (DRS) at both the fund and industry levels. The authors examine the robustness of their inferences after Adams, Hayunga, and Mansi (2021) critique the above two studies.
Mutual Fund to ETF Conversions: To Proxy or Not to Proxy, that is the question
ETF conversions are accelerating and we are seeing more and more mutual funds converting into ETFs. The reasons for mutual fund to ETF conversions are obvious: tax efficiency, transparency, and lower operating costs. But how does this work? What are the pro/cons? This post provides a glimpse behind the curtain and a practical guide for any asset manager considering a mutual fund conversion. Below we outline the laws behind a mutual fund conversion, options for mutual fund conversions, and the nitty-gritty behind how to optimize a mutual fund conversion.
Machine Learning and The Cross-Section of Emerging Market Stock Returns
The paper documents that return forecasts from machine learning methods lead to superior out-of-sample returns in emerging markets.
Global Factor Performance: December 2022
Standardized Performance Factor Performance Factor Exposures Factor Premiums Factor Attribution Factor Data Downloads
Volatility scaling is useful for factor timing
This paper investigates the effects of volatility scaling on factor portfolio performance and factor timing.
The “Resurrected” Size Effect and Monetary Policy
Given that tightening monetary policy increases economic risks, Simpson and Grossman provided compelling evidence of a risk explanation for the size factor. For those investors who engage in tactical asset allocation strategies (market timing), their evidence suggests that it might be possible to exploit the information. Before jumping to that conclusion, I would caution that because markets are forward-looking, they should anticipate periods of Fed tightening and the heightened risks of small stocks.