The Magnificent Seven
When a small subset of companies makes up a large portion of a portfolio, for better or worse their returns will have a greater impact on overall portfolio results.
Is Inflation Ever Going to Go Down?
If inflation surges, how long on average, will it take to subside to a reasonable target rate of 2%?
The Performance of Major Private Equity/LBO Firms
The claims of superior risk-adjusted performance by the PE industry are exaggerated. Given their lack of liquidity, opaqueness, and greater use of leverage, it seems logical that investors should demand something like a 3-4% IRR premium. Yet, there is no evidence that the industry overall has been able to deliver that.
Organization Capital and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns
This paper focuses on "organization capital," representing intangible assets in a firm's key employees that is not captured by classic value measures such as book-to-market. The authors propose a structural model to analyze the impact of organizational capital on asset prices and argue that shareholders perceive firms with high levels of organizational capital to be riskier than those with more physical capital.
Technology Spillover Impacts Stock Returns
The timelier adoption of new technology and the higher likelihood of large-scale technology adoption make the risk associated with technological innovation more systematic, which in turn increases returns required by investors for technology spillover recipients.
Value versus Values in ESG Investing
The relationship between financial markets and ESG investing is obscured by the lack of clarity regarding motivations for investing in ESG strategies. Is the motive to align the investor’s values with the ESG theme? Or is the ESG term a misnomer for a set of stocks that are systematically undervalued, for some reason as a function of its ESG characteristics?
Dissecting the Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle
Idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) is the volatility of a security that cannot be explained by overall market volatility—it is the risk unique to a particular security. IVOL contrasts with systematic risk, which is the risk that affects all securities in a market (such as changes in interest rates or inflation) and, therefore cannot be diversified away. On the other hand, the risks of high IVOL stocks can at least be reduced through diversification.
Executives vs. Chatbots in Earnings Conference Q&A
In this study, we introduce a novel measure of information content (Human-AI Differences, HAID) by exploiting the discrepancy between answers to questions at earnings calls provided by corporate executives and those given by several context-preserving Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, and an open source LLM.
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 Filters – Part 7
This article examines four digital filters commonly used for trend-following: moving average linear weighted moving average exponential smoothing time series momentum
Institutional Investing and Manager Forbearance
Forbearance is important and we argue that performance evaluation should be multifaceted, akin to a Bayesian decision-maker who conducts continued due diligence and updates beliefs about returns with process information.
How to Crush the CFPⓇ Exam ????: Part 2
As discussed in Part 1 of this blog series, the Certified Financial Planner (CFPⓇ) exam can be a stressful and intimidating experience. With eight areas of content to cover – both as siloed financial knowledge and also as an integrated approach to building a comprehensive financial plan – it's important to be organized and intentional in your study efforts.
International Value Stocks Offering “More Bang for the Buck”
Over the very long term, while value stocks have been less profitable and have had slower growth in earnings than growth stocks, they have provided higher returns.
The democratization of investing and the evolution of ETFs
The implications of the competitive landscape for ETFs are mixed. On one hand, they have truly democratized investing. Investors now have access to the benefits of financial markets in one instrument that provides diversification at very low fees. Recently advertised fees on broad-based bond funds have fallen to 3bps. On the other hand, ETF providers have been able to satisfy investor demand for increasingly specialized products even though the evidence suggests they underperform. Are investors becoming worse off due to the effectiveness of the marketing strategies by providers of specialized ETFs?
ESG Preferences Negatively Affecting Market Efficiency
While ESG investors can express their values through their investments, they should expect lower returns from their portfolios—though they also will be taking less investment risk.
Geographic Investing and Company Operations
The article explores the limitations of traditional country-level stock market indexes that are constructed based on the domicile of issuing firms.
The Research and Development Factor
The higher returns to high R&D stocks represent compensation for heightened systematic risk not captured in standard asset pricing models.
A New Wolf in Town? Pump-and-Dump Manipulation in Cryptocurrency Markets
Cryptocurrency and the various forms of infrastructure are currently in a stage of rapid innovation. If the manipulation embedded in PADs is widespread then the confidence in and integrity of the crypto market will suffer.
The Role of ESG in Equity Returns Across Private, Primary, and Secondary Markets
The continued popularity of sustainable strategies could create sufficient cash flows to offset the risk premium in the lower-scoring stocks, at least until an equilibrium is reached.
How to Crush the CFPⓇ Exam ????: Part 1
Let’s talk about the right approach(es) and the proper study techniques you need to pass the CFPⓇ exam with confidence and get the certification you need to advance your career in finance and investing.