Other Insights

Moving Average Distance and Time-Series Momentum

For investors that use trend-following strategies, Avramov, Kaplanski, and Subrhmanyam provided new evidence supporting momentum strategies and showed that the distance between short- and longer-term momentum signals provides additional explanatory power in the cross-section of equity returns.

Outperforming Cap- (Value-) Weighted and Equal-Weighted Portfolios

Antonello Cirulli and Patrick Walker, authors of the December 2023 study “Outperforming Equal Weighting,” examined whether equally weighted portfolios could be enhanced by avoiding negative exposure to some of the most prominent factor anomalies documented in asset pricing literature.

Financial Literacy in the US…Doesn’t look great!

This paper aims to analyze financial literacy in the United States, utilizing the most recent data from the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) collected in 2021 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation. The paper focuses on the importance of financial literacy, particularly in the context of the economic conditions in the US, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, and changes in the financial system.

Fifty Shades of Grey Swans: Timeless Risks with a Modern Twist

The world is complex and ever-changing; news travels at warp speed, events happen fast, and popular narratives can distract and mislead us. Many risks important for our portfolios are new, hidden, or nuanced in some underappreciated way—and likely to be misunderstood and mispriced in the markets. Other risks can hide in plain sight. Good risk management can be described as a balancing act that employs the first principles of investing, lessons from history, behavioral psychology, a little math, and even our imagination in service of our objective: to detect and defend against the risks we can foresee and fortify our portfolios against those we cannot. In short: we need informed creativity, not calculation.

The Financial Distress Puzzle

The empirical research findings demonstrate that the return premium generated by being long low-distress risk stocks and short high-distress risk stocks is persistent and that the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the Fama-French three-factor models cannot explain it. Hence, we have the distress puzzle, or anomaly.

Are stock returns predictable at different points in time?

For many benchmark predictor variables, short-horizon return predictability in the U.S. stock market is local in time as short periods with significant predictability (“pockets”) are interspersed with long periods with no return predictability.

The Temptation of Factor Timing

The timing of equity factor premiums has a strong allure for investors because academic research has found that factor premiums are both time-varying and dependent on the economic cycle.

Is now a good time to buy bonds?

As pundits wrestle over the cause, implications, and sustainability of the recent massive moves in interest rates, I’ll instead delve into the two terms most often blamed for these shifts in rates: R-star and the Term Structure Premium. Unfortunately, what most want—a measure of them—is unknowable. But we can benefit from understanding the theories and models behind these terms. We can glean guidance on what we need, namely a better understanding of the risks and rewards of buying longer-maturing bonds at current rate levels. I contend that now is a good time to secure future cash flows by buying bonds, although determining the precise amount to invest remains a challenge.

A new twist on momentum strategies: Utilize overlapping momentum portfolios

Momentum investors utilize different timeframes to identify high momentum equities: past 6, 9, 12 months as an example. Obviously, there is a significant degree of overlap in momentum stocks identified across various past time frames. However, there has been little research focused on understanding the characteristics of momentum stocks formed on six and 12 months that overlap one another. The authors refer to the subset as “overlapping” stocks and suggest they constitute the largest proportion of the profitability of the momentum strategy.

Focus on Income Can Undermine Returns: The Case of Covered Calls

Covered calls implemented to deliver higher derivative income should be expected to have (1) lower total returns, (2) higher tax realizations along the path, and (3) a more negatively skewed return profile. Investors who allocate to these strategies for their income alone, without accounting for these other considerations, might have made a devil’s bargain

Is ESG Investing Counterproductive?

The article introduces a concept called "impact elasticity," which measures how a firm's environmental impact changes in response to shifts in its cost of capital (the "E" in "ESG"). It finds that the dominant sustainable investing strategy, which favors green firms and punishes brown firms by altering their cost of capital, can be counterproductive.

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