A Quantitative Strategy for Enhancing Merger Arbitrage
Merger arbitrage, sometimes known as "risk arbitrage," is an investing strategy in which the investor bets on announced M&A deals. After a merger is announced, [...]
Academic Research Insight: Results on Financial Misconduct Depend on the Database One Uses
Proxies and Databases in Financial Misconduct Research Jonathan M. Karpoff, Allison Koester, D. Scott Lee and Gerald S. Martin The Accounting Review A version of [...]
Value and Momentum Factor Portfolio Construction: Combine, Intersect, or Sequence?
Wes asked that I contribute to the ongoing debates regarding the construction of value and momentum portfolios. There are three key research pieces on [...]
The Mother of All Momentum Research Reports. A Must Read!
J.P. Morgan researchers, Marko Kolanovic and Zhen Wei, produced an incredibly detailed report on all aspects of momentum (one of our favorite topics!) Here is [...]
Academic Research Insight: Surprise! Seeking Alpha Opinions Have Investment Value
Wisdom of the Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted Through Social Media Hailiang Chen, Prabuddha De, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Byoung Hyoun Hwang Review of [...]
The History of ETFs: Perspectives from ETF Legends, Reggie Browne and Arlene Rockefeller
ETFs have grown fast, yet there are still some opponents of the structure. However, the general story by ETF opponents has changed over the past [...]
The Value Effect and Macroeconomic Risk
It has been well-documented that value stocks have provided higher expected returns than growth stocks. However, there is a great debate about the source of [...]
Academic Research Insight: Yes, Departing Outside Directors Are Aware of Fraud Before They Resign
Go Before the Whistle Blows: An Empirical Analysis of Director Turnover and Financial Fraud Yanmin Gao, Jeong-Bon Kim, Desmond Tsang, Haibin Wu Review of Accounting [...]
Predicting Stock Returns Using Firm Characteristics
A few weeks ago, we did a deep dive into the factors versus characteristics debate. One of the reasons we've brought up this debate is [...]
Academic Research Insight: The Importance of Financial Literacy
Employees Financial Literacy and Retirement Plan Behavior: A Case Study Robert Clark, Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia Mitchell Economic Inquiry, forthcoming A version of this paper can be [...]
The Tax Efficiency of Long-Short Strategies
Conventional wisdom can be defined as ideas that are so accepted that they go unquestioned. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom is often wrong. Two great examples are [...]
Academic Research Insight: Predicting Long Run Stock Returns? It’s All About the Payout.
The Long-Run Drivers of Stock Returns: Total Payouts and the Real Economy Philip U. Straehl and Roger G. Ibbotson Financial Analysts Journal A version of [...]
The Returns to Value Strategies When Valuation Spreads Are Wide (Deep Value)
The academic research has generally found valuations, such as the earnings yield (E/P) (or the CAPE 10 earnings yield) and valuation spreads, have predictive value [...]
Book Review — Market Timing with Moving Averages
Trend-following is something I've struggled with for years -- always felt like voodoo magic and data-mining. That said, I finally came around to appreciating the [...]
Academic Research Insight: Industry Herding by Short Sellers Signals that Conditions are Changing
Do short sellers exploit industry information? Zsuzsa R. Huszár, Ruth S.K. Tan, Weina Zhang Journal of Empirical Finance A version of this paper can be [...]
ESOP Attorney — How to Hire One and Why It Matters
The sequential process by which ESOP advisory teams are assembled by business owners requires that they get it right–from the start. An ESOP attorney is the linchpin in that process. Here is what you need to know.
Academic Research Insight: Beware of the Surprise Departure of Independent Directors!
Do Independent Director Departures Predict Future Bad Events? Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, Angie Low, and René M. Stulz The Review of Financial Studies A version of this [...]
Momentum and Market Anomalies
Momentum is the tendency for assets that have performed well (poorly) in the recent past to continue to perform well (poorly) in the future, at [...]
Historical Finance Fight: Ben Graham versus H.M. Gartley
Reading really old research is humbling. https://archive.org/ is an awesome place to start. One quickly recognizes that market participants were very savvy way back in the [...]
Academic Research Insight: Diverisification is Not Always a Free Lunch
What Free Lunch? The Costs of Overdiversification Shawn McKay, Robert Shapiro, Ric Thomas A version of this paper can be found here Want to read our [...]