Factor ETF Due Diligence: A New Challenge for Some Investors
Factor investing seems to be everywhere, but the topic is still misunderstood by large swaths of the investing public. Tommi Johnsen and I would like [...]
Using Trend-Following Rules to Enhance Factor Performance
After reviewing the 2016 performance of trend-following (-18.15%), its unclear why anyone would mention the word "trend following" in a public forum. But we'll give it [...]
Is the Low Volatility Anomaly driven by Lottery Demand?
A few years ago I wrote a summary on a working paper titled "A Lottery Demand-Based Explanation of the Beta Anomaly." The paper is still [...]
Great Minds Agree to Disagree on the Source of the Value Investing Premium
Active investing sounds so easy. But we all know it is extremely difficult. Ask any deep value investor how they have felt over the past [...]
An Evidence-Based Low Volatility Investing Discussion
Jack and I had the honor of attending the Evidence-Based Investing conference, hosted by the team at Ritholz Wealth Management. Wow. What a great event and [...]
Value Investing using Enterprise Multiples — Is the Premium Due to Risk and/or Mispricing?
At Alpha Architect, we are big fans of Value investing (and Momentum). In the past, Wes and I examined which valuation measure had the largest spread [...]
The Rebalance Bonus for Value and Momentum Porfolios
A sophisticated DFA-focused advisor asked us to conduct some research on the following question: Are there additional portfolio diversification benefits to combining concentrated portfolios of value and [...]
Book Review — Common Stocks and Common Sense
Investing can perhaps be best learned through a combination of applied practice and continuous study. While there is no substitute for real-world experience and the [...]
How to Measure Momentum?
Since we've released our new book, Quantitative Momentum, we've received a handful of basic questions related to momentum--specifically as it relates to stock selection. To [...]
Digging Deeper into Closed End Fund Investment Opportunities
A couple of weeks ago, I received Franklin Templeton Investments' letter to shareholders of Franklin Limited Duration Trust (ticker FTF) imploring us to not let "self-serving" Saba [...]
Value Investing Got Crushed During the Internet Bubble — Here’s Why…
The dot-com bubble of the late 90s was a wild time in the stock market. Internet stocks were trading through the roof, tech IPOs were [...]
Quantitative Momentum: A Guide to Momentum-Based Stock Selection
The long wait is over. Our newest book--Quantitative Momentum--is finally here. After 2 years of research review, results replication, reverse engineering, internal idea generation, writing, editing, [...]
Predicting Booms and Busts in Low Volatility Strategies
Low volatility funds are some of the best performers in the market these days. As such, they have attracted renewed attention in addition to significant [...]
Value investing is quite possibly the worst idea…EVER
n short, value investing the past few years has been a bad experience, but things can get a lot worse before they can get better. Sadly, this is the lot of the value investor. Value investing is really a tragic story of pain, anguish, and heartbreak that never really has a happy ending. The expected gains are almost always offset with extreme relative performance pain.
Is momentum investing dead? Or is it just painful?
Sometimes even the best evidence-based active investment strategies can create a formidable challenge to investors seeking to exploit them. Case in point -- momentum investing. [...]
When Academics Disagree on Momentum Investing
The academic standard for intermediate-term momentum measurement is "12_2 momentum:" simply sort all stocks based on a stock's total return over the past twelve months, ignoring [...]
Time Series Momentum and Volatility Scaling
There is a new paper published in the Journal of Financial Markets that digs a bit deeper into the Moskowitz, Ooi, and Pedersen "Time Series [...]
Surprise! The Size, Value, and Momentum Anomalies Survive After Trading Costs
Anyone who has spent time reading this blog has become familiar with research involving asset pricing anomalies that generate excess returns. In particular, the academic [...]
Taming the Momentum Investing Roller Coaster: Fact or Fiction?
Intermediate-Term Price momentum, originally researched by Jegadeesh and Titman in 1993, documented a how recent stock returns tended to continue in the future. Stocks that [...]
Can Investors Replicate the Dorsey Wright Focus 5 ETF Strategy?
A long-time reader asked that we examine the performance and process associated with the Dorsey Wright Focus Five ETF (ticker: FV). For those who are unfamiliar [...]