Alpha Architect

Factor Investors: Momentum is Everywhere

The Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) paper on momentum established that an equity trading strategy consisting of buying past winners and selling past losers, reliably produced risk-adjusted excess returns. The Jegadeesh results have been replicated in international markets and across asset classes. As this evidence challenged and contradicted widely accepted notions of weak-form market efficiency, the academic community took notice and started churning out research. As a result, a very large number of academic studies were published on momentum. The article summarized here has conveniently summarized 47 articles deemed as the highest quality and published in either the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, or the Journal of Financial Economics, all three considered premier journals in the finance discipline. It is difficult to understate the importance of having a well-curated summary of momentum research. Keep it in your library.

Trend Following and Momentum Turning Points

Trend follower nerd alert: This study is important because it offers a comprehensive analysis of TS momentum strategies, its unifying framework that links performance to underlying variables, and its practical implications for investors seeking to enhance their understanding of momentum investing and improve their portfolio performance.

Do Short-Term Factor Strategies Survive Transaction Costs?

Short term return anomalies are generally dismissed in the academic literature "because they seemingly do not survive after accounting for market frictions.” In this research, short term “factors” are taken seriously and the authors argue the standard parameters may not apply for short horizons.

Evidence supporting factor-based seasonalities

Factor seasonality reflects its own stock-level equivalent. It is not an independent risk factor.

Investor demand, rating reform and equity returns

The traditional financial theory attributes security returns to market- or factor-based risk, with no role ascribed to other influences. In this research, the authors argue for including investor demand as an additional variable in explaining returns. Can changes in investor demand generate systematic changes in security returns?

Doug Discusses 1042 QRP and ESOP Transactions

Doug Pugliese, the head of our 1042 QRP business, was recently invited on the ScuttleButt Podcast to discuss the ESOP landscape and the costs and benefits of 1042 QRP transactions. (article on the topic is here).

Reducing the Risk of Momentum Crashes

The empirical research demonstrates that, on average, investing in previous winners and short selling previous losers offers highly significant returns that other common risk factors cannot explain. However, momentum also displays huge tail risk, as there are short but persistent periods of highly negative returns. Crashes occur particularly in reversals from bear markets when the momentum portfolio displays a negative market beta and momentum volatility is high.

Fundamentals and the Attenuation of Anomalies

The article aims to explore the possibility that changes in fundamentals play a role in the attenuation of stock market anomalies, offering an alternative explanation to the prevailing arbitrage-based explanation

Industry classification and the momentum factor

This paper finds that the level of industry classification plays a significant role in the performance of industry momentum strategies.

2023 Democratize Quant Conference Recap and Materials

We recently hosted our 6th Annual Democratize Quant Conference. This post is a recap of what we heard and some resources we can make available to the public.

Reducing the Impact of Momentum Crashes

Momentum crashes are a blight on the performance of momentum strategies. Although there has been a fair amount of research on the topic, few practical solutions have emerged to mitigate the impact on portfolios. In this study, the authors document the outperformance of stocks, in terms of momentum, far away from their peak position relative to stocks very near their peaks. Turns out the outperformance is very large. It also accounts for the majority of negative momentum performance.

Democratize Quant 2023 is Live. Sign-up!

Eric Balchunas, Cliff Asness, Kai Wu, Que Nguyen, Corey Hoffstein

Novel explanations for risk-based option momentum

In this paper, we propose a cross-sectional option momentum strategy that is based on the risk component of delta-hedged option returns. We find strong evidence of risk continuation in option returns.

How factor exposure changes over time: a study of Information Decay

Factor strategies need to be rebalanced in order to maintain their factor exposure. But different factors decay at different rates and this affects how they should be rebalanced. For example, momentum needs to be rebalanced more than value. This study digs into these questions.

Combining Reversals with Time-Series Momentum Strategies

Jiadong Liu and Fotis Papailias contribute to the momentum literature with their study “Time Series Reversal in Trend-Following Strategies,” published in the January 2023 issue of “European Financial Management,” in which they examined the reversal property of various financial assets.

Can We Improve Momentum Factor Investing via Salience Theory?

The contribution of salience theory to the theory of asset pricing turns out to be quite a profitable insight for momentum strategies.

Does Momentum work in Option Markets?

This paper explores the question of option momentum by examining what the research says about the performance of option investments across different stocks.

Is there a theoretical foundation behind industry and factor momentum

Industry and factor momentum should be viewed as recent developments in the wider momentum story, although these aggregated measures of momentum lack any theoretical foundation.

The Cross Section of Stock Returns Pre-CRSP data: Value and Momentum are confirmed as robust anomalies

We study the cross-section of stock returns using a novel constructed database of U.S. stocks covering 61 years of independent data.

Momentum Factor Investing: 30 years of Out of Sample Data

In this article, the author examines the research published over the last 30 years on momentum and its theoretical credibility. One of the original momentum articles was published by Jegadeesh and Titman in 1993, and is considered the seminal work on the topic. The research review contained in this publication begins with the 1993 work and confines itself to only the highest quality journals among the plethora of work that has been published on momentum.

Are You Ready to Become a Better Investor?

Important Disclosures

Momentum Investing Research

Are You Ready to Become a Better Investor?

Important Disclosures