Other Insights Archives

Do Mutual Funds Increase Disclosure Complexity to Hide Fees?

Do mutual funds create unnecessarily complex disclosures and fee structures to obfuscate weak net performance? Yes.

What percentage of COO/CCO/CTOs in Finance are Women?

This is the second article in a series on women in leadership roles. To dig deeper into where women are in finance we analyzed 36,499 functional positions for the COO, CCO, and CTO roles in 29 countries, including 25 developed markets and Brazil, Russia, India, China (the “BRICs”). All public and private firms in the finance industry were included regardless of market capitalization or other characteristics.

The Relationship Between the Value Premium and Interest Rates

We've been suffering through the deepest and longest drawdown in values history. Looking for a scapegoat to explain the lackluster performance many have pointed to low interest rates as the root cause of the underperformance. The question is have interest rates impacted value in the past?

ESG Investing: Dissecting Green Returns

In theory green stocks should have lower expected returns, this however, is not what we've seen. So the question is what has caused the outperformance of green stocks? And has that outperformance cost value investors their returns?

Does the Market Efficiently Price the Value of Brands?

Despite the fact that a company’s internally generated intangible investments create future value, under current U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, internally developed intangibles are not included in reported assets. While research and development is an important intangible asset, so too is branding. Omission of an increasingly important class of assets reduces the usefulness and relevance of financial statement analysis that uses book value.

Value and Momentum Factors? Naw, Focus on the Music Factor!

Can market sentiment be derived from the tunes that your fellow countrymen are listening to? According to the research summarized here you'll find that there is important market information buried in the listening habits of Spotify users.

Smarter in 10 Minutes with Matt Topley

Time to get smarter in less than 10 minutes.

Welcome to our weekly series, "Smarter in 10 Minutes." This weekly series is aligned with our mission to empower investors through education and is curated by Matt Topley, a 25yr+ vet in the business who currently runs Lansing Street Advisors.

Matt wakes up "Jocko style" every morning and shoots out a daily newsletter (I'm a loyal reader!). The weekly "Smarter in 10 Minutes" is a lower frequency version of his daily newsletter.

Size, Value, Profitability, and Investment Factors in International Stocks

Using data on 65,000 stocks from 23 countries, they evaluated the performance of the Fama-French factors, examining the factor premia in global markets to verify their robustness across different company size categories and geographical regions. Their data sample covered the period 1987-2019.

Can Prospect Theory Explain the Value and Momentum Factors?

Today we summarize an investigation into the usefulness of Prospect Theory and Narrow Framing to evaluate whether a new model can help explain 22 prominent market anomalies.

Should We Never Invest in Individual Stocks?

Due to the surprising headline that treasury bills seemingly outperform stocks, practitioners are starting to ask: Should I invest in individual stocks?

Why Do Investors Hold ESG Investments?

There was really only one question investigated in this research: Are social preferences and values the main drivers of an SRI investors' choice of SRI mutual funds?

Chasing Low Beta Loses Alpha

One of the big problems for the first formal asset pricing model developed by financial economists, the CAPM, was that it predicts a positive relationship between risk and return. However, empirical studies have found the actual relationship to be basically flat, or even negative. Over the last 50 years, the most “defensive” (low-volatility or low-beta, low-risk) stocks have delivered both higher returns and higher risk-adjusted returns than the most “aggressive” (high-volatility, high-risk) stocks.

Do Financial Advisors Transmit their Biases to Clients? Yes.

Are there similarities in the trading behavior of financial advisors and their clients? Are fees paid by advisors and clients similar too? Are advisers overconfident in their skill at identifying active managers and in their ability to outperform passive investments?

Are You Ready to Become a Better Investor?

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