Quant Mashup - Alpha Architect
Evidence-Based Investing Requires Less Religion and More Reason [Alpha Architect]
During the 1600s, the Dutch had a large merchant fleet and the port city of Amsterdam was a dominant commercial hub for trade from around the world. Based on the growing influence of the Dutch Republic, in 1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded, and its evolution into the first publicly
- 8 years ago, 27 Jul 2016, 12:32pm -
Stale Performance Chasing: Beware of Horizon Effects [Alpha Architect]
Investors talk a big game when describing how they evaluate mutual funds. They say they consider things like the objectives of the fund, its size, and the longevity of its managers. But there’s one factor that looms larger than all the others: Performance. We wrote here about how investors tend to
- 8 years ago, 21 Jul 2016, 11:25am -
Style Momentum in Australia? [Alpha Architect]
Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) popularized a simple idea: "past winners outperform past losers." Post JT, the relative strength, or "momentum anomaly," was forever ingrained in the minds of academic researchers (which is odd, since the idea had been around 50 years prior to JT 1993,
- 8 years ago, 19 Jul 2016, 01:15pm -
The Folly of Stock Market Forecasting [Alpha Architect]
The idea that one can predict stock market movements is somewhat insane. The major problem with stock market forecasting is the lack of evidence that it is possible. I am unaware of any market commentator that has been successful–on a consistent basis–at predicting the future direction of the
- 8 years ago, 12 Jul 2016, 12:12pm -
An Alternative Investment Strategy with Value and Momentum [Alpha Architect]
Anyone who follows our website should be familiar with the extensive evidence behind our favorite stock selection strategies: Value Investing Momentum Investing The evidence suggests that high-conviction ( We document why high conviction is important for both value and momentum strategies here and
- 8 years ago, 7 Jul 2016, 01:05pm -
Questioning Everything You Knew about Asset Allocation [Alpha Architect]
Is a 100% stock allocation crazy? As long as one addresses their needs for liquidity (as to avoid extracting capital from the markets at bad times) and can tolerate the market price volatility, a 100% or near-100% allocation to equities is not as outlandish as one might suspect. Focusing on
- 8 years ago, 30 Jun 2016, 08:36pm -
Backtesting Based on Multiple Signals - Beware of Overfitting [Alpha Architect]
One of the dangers of being a quantitative investor is that when you see patterns in historical data you might wrongly assume they will repeat. Put another way, you might believe an effect is driven by a genuine relationship, when in reality the results are spurious and the result of luck. We wrote
- 8 years ago, 28 Jun 2016, 10:35am -
Stock Market Anomalies and Baseball Cards [Alpha Architect]
I still have a Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie Card. To be honest, I don’t even know where the thing is, but I hope it is it worth a ton of money at this point (although I doubt it). So disclaimer up front: I dabbled in baseball card trading back in the day. And for all of you out there who used to trade
- 8 years ago, 27 Jun 2016, 09:33am -
Digging Deeper into Adaptive Asset Allocation [Alpha Architect]
In some ways, investing is simple. After all, we all want the same things. High returns. Low volatility. Small max drawdowns. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult–if not impossible–to have your cake and eat it too. There are always tradeoffs among these desires that have to be managed by
- 8 years ago, 20 Jun 2016, 12:31pm -
Invert, Always Invert: Will Stocks Diversify Bonds in the Future? [Alpha Architect]
My last post, “Will bonds deliver crisis alpha in the next crisis?,” created quite a stir on the blogosphere. The underlying assumption of the analysis is that stocks are a core component of a portfolio and bonds are included to diversify the portfolio. The key takeaway from my analysis is that
- 8 years ago, 17 Jun 2016, 12:40pm -
Want to Know the Secret to Inefficient Prices? Lazy Prices. [Alpha Architect]
How do you handle repetitive tasks? If you’re like most people, you work through a task in a variety of ways, find the most efficient approach, and then stick to that workflow. Consider email address autofill, automatic payment plans, or automatic renewal of magazine subscriptions. Because of
- 8 years ago, 13 Jun 2016, 06:32pm -
Will Bonds Deliver Crisis Alpha in the Next Crisis? [Alpha Architect]
Bonds are often viewed as being great diversifiers due to the perception that they perform well during tough times for stocks. Historically this has been a true statement. But will it continue? Our answer: unclear. Most investors use correlation to measure the diversification benefit an investment
- 8 years ago, 7 Jun 2016, 11:58am -
Bubble Investing: Learning from History [Alpha Architect]
We just wrote a piece for Forbes on financial bubbles in the lab. Punchline: investors initially underreact to fundamentals, then they overreact, and eventually prices correct. But how common are crashes? Ben has some interesting thoughts, but the results are limited to the US market. Now, one of my
- 8 years ago, 3 Jun 2016, 09:31am -
Want to spot a true Value Investor? Look for horrible recent performance [Alpha Architect]
Harry Houdini is perhaps the best-known magician of all time, gaining notoriety in the early 20th century through his daring escape acts. Houdini escaped from straight jackets while suspended from chains, fought his way out of submerged mailbags, and performed a “buried alive” stunt. Crowds
- 8 years ago, 1 Jun 2016, 11:27am -
Behavioral Finance Strikes Again: Contrast Effects in Markets [Alpha Architect]
At this point, even hard core efficient market fans will likely admit that behavior can influence investment decisions. Humans aren’t robots. However, just because some investors exhibit bad behavior that doesn’t mean they can influence prices. As the story goes, smart investors are prepared to
- 8 years ago, 20 May 2016, 09:34am -
A Stunning New Finding: Return Seasonalities are Everywhere [Alpha Architect]
We’ve discussed return seasonalities in the past, especially as they pertain to our approach to momentum. Turns out seasonality effects aren’t confined to momentum — they are literally everywhere and they are incredibly strong. This paper will blow your mind once you let the results settle in
- 8 years ago, 18 May 2016, 08:57pm -
Not so Simple: Valuations and Low Volatility Strategies [Alpha Architect]
Low volatility funds are everywhere. The reasons for their proliferation are clear: Who wouldn’t want to own something with the label “low volatility” and Recent performance has been great. Open the AUM floodgates! But perhaps not all is well in low volatility land. A recent snippet by Josh
- 8 years ago, 17 May 2016, 12:38pm -
How Portfolio Construction Affects Value Funds [Alpha Architect]
Value investing is an investment philosophy that has been extensively discussed and examined at least since the days of Ben Graham, who popularized it as a discipline in the 20s and 30s. While there are some who are dismissive of its advantages as a long-term strategy, the historical evidence is
- 8 years ago, 13 May 2016, 08:08pm -
Alternative Beta can be Great: But Beware of Data-Mining! [Alpha Architect]
We investigate the biases in the backtested performance of “alternative beta” strategies using a sample of 215 commercially promoted trading strategies across five asset classes. Our results lend support to the cautions in recent literature regarding backtest overfitting and lack of robustness
- 8 years ago, 9 May 2016, 07:30pm -
The Academic Finance Papers That Changed My Mind [Alpha Architect]
What does it mean to be the “best” research? For me, this means the most influential in changing my view on the world. So the below list of “best” research represents the research that 1) changed my view of the world 2) helped sharpen my thinking. For context, I’ve been reading source
- 8 years ago, 5 May 2016, 05:57pm -
Facts, Fiction, and Merger Arbitrage [Alpha Architect]
Investors love to chase after the “next big thing,” as investment strategies and styles come in and go out of vogue. The latest object of investor infatuation may be a revitalized interest in merger arbitrage. Consider this bloomberg headline: “Hedge Fund Investors Have Fallen in Love with
- 8 years ago, 28 Apr 2016, 05:25pm -
How the day of the week affects stock market anomalies [Alpha Architect]
This paper documents a new empirical fact. Long-short anomaly returns are strongly related to the day of the week. Anomalies for which the speculative leg is the short (long) leg experience the highest (lowest) strategy returns on Monday. The exact opposite pattern is observed on Fridays. The
- 8 years ago, 25 Apr 2016, 04:06pm -
The Moving Average Research King: Valeriy Zakamulin [Alpha Architect]
Some weekend reading for trend-followers who want to question their beliefs. Valeriy Zakamulin is an animal when it comes to generating research on moving averages. We’ve done a lot of the same work, but we’re too lazy to tabulate the results in an academic paper format. king of ma The king of
- 8 years ago, 22 Apr 2016, 02:52pm -
Can Twitter Predict the Market's Reaction to Fed FOMC Decisions? [Alpha Architect]
Twitter seems to be a favorite dataset for financial researchers. Researchers keep trying to map tweets to profits. For example, we covered an idea related to this almost 5 years ago: Is trading with twitter only for twits? We had another post that was released about a year after our original
- 8 years ago, 12 Apr 2016, 01:06pm -
Smart Beta: Data Mining, Arbitraged Away, Or Here To Stay? [Alpha Architect]
Large institutional investors have had access to low-cost "smart beta" for many years. But for retail investors and their financial advisors, "smart beta" ETFs are a welcome innovation. Instead of trying to identify an expensive manager who can pick stocks, a retail investor can
- 8 years ago, 7 Apr 2016, 03:25pm -
Update on the Valuation Metric Horserace: 2011-2015 [Alpha Architect]
Jack and I published, “Analyzing Valuation Measures: A Performance Horse-Race Over the Past 40 Years,” in the 2012 Journal of Portfolio Management. horse race Here is a summary of the research paper on our own blog. The paper asked a simple question: “Which valuation metric has historically
- 8 years ago, 6 Apr 2016, 12:24pm -
Have benchmarks made us bad active investors? [Alpha Architect]
Obsession with short-term performance against market cap benchmarks preordains the dysfunctionality of asset markets. The problems start when trustees hire fund managers to outperform benchmark indexes subject to limits on annual divergence… Benchmarking causes, first, the inversion of the
- 8 years ago, 24 Mar 2016, 12:56pm -
Why Investors Should Combine Value and Momentum [Alpha Architect]
In the past we have discussed how to combine value and momentum strategies to improve an equity allocation. In this piece we discuss why an investor should combine use value and momentum.* Many investors recognize that stand-alone value and momentum strategies have historically worked. Of course,
- 8 years ago, 22 Mar 2016, 02:47pm -
Has the Value Investing Pain Train Ended? [Alpha Architect]
Last year we highlighted what we deemed the “value investing pain train.” In 2015, cheap high-quality stocks started getting crushed by expensive junk stocks. Here is a recap of the carnage. In many respects, value investing is a lot like Terry Tate — the huge “office” linebacker that
- 8 years ago, 9 Mar 2016, 03:38am -
Replicating Private Equity: the Impact of Return Smoothing [Alpha Architect]
Having spent what seems like a lifetime in the financial industry at this point, I’ve always had this nagging suspicion about private equity (PE): private equity investments are not special. And I’ll take my hunch a bit further: public equity markets can deliver the same return profile as
- 8 years ago, 7 Mar 2016, 12:32pm -
Predicting Anomalies with politics, weather, global warming, sunspots, and the stars [Alpha Architect]
We’ve discussed the use of predictive regressions in the past. Here is an article to learn a bit more about the technique. And while the idea sounds cool, and could even be relabeled a low-tier “machine-learning” technique if someone wanted to sell the idea, we can’t find anything exciting
- 8 years ago, 25 Feb 2016, 12:04pm -
Chasing Returns and Avoiding "Spaghetti against the Wall Fund Companies" [Alpha Architect]
Psychology research suggests that when we make predictions, we suffer from “representative bias,” and mistakenly overweight observations that fit a particular narrative, and fail to consider base rate probabilities. For example, if we flip a coin 5 times and it shows up H, H, H, H, H, we may
- 8 years ago, 20 Feb 2016, 01:34pm -
Dual Momentum on Individual Stocks. Wow. [Alpha Architect]
Hot off the press and haven’t had time to reverse engineer and verify, but this is pretty interesting stuff at first glance. The Enduring Effect of Time-Series Momentum on Stock Returns Over Nearly 100-Years This study documents the significant profitability of “time-series momentum”
- 8 years ago, 11 Feb 2016, 12:46pm -
Loosening Short Sale Constraints Makes Markets More Efficient [Alpha Architect]
We examine the causal effect of limits to arbitrage on ten well-known asset pricing anomalies using Regulation SHO, which reduced the cost of short selling for a random set of pilot stocks, as a natural experiment. We find that the anomalies become substantially weaker on portfolios constructed with
- 8 years ago, 5 Feb 2016, 10:33pm -
Even God Would Get Fired as an Active Investor [Alpha Architect]
Empirical asset pricing research can sometimes get monotonous because you end up circling back relentlessly to the same conclusions: value works, momentum works, and yet, markets are remarkably efficient. But, sometimes, research uncovers absolutely stunning and counter-intuitive results–and this
- 8 years ago, 2 Feb 2016, 10:32am -
The most concise explanation of behavioral finance I've ever seen [Alpha Architect]
One of the most overused– and misunderstood — terms I’ve seen used by finance practitioners is “behavioral finance.” Many professionals consider themselves to be “behavioral finance experts” because they identify irrational investors.1 Newsflash: Identifying irrational investors is not
- 8 years ago, 29 Jan 2016, 10:32am -
How Does Analyst Optimism Affect Momentum Strategies? [Alpha Architect]
We examine the effect of security analyst recommendations on stock price momentum. Results show that momentum profits are directly linked to analyst optimism. Specifically, we find that a 1-unit change in recommendation quintile translates to about a 50 basis point change in subsequent 3-month
- 8 years ago, 27 Jan 2016, 10:09pm -
Following Opportunistic insiders Earns over 1% Monthly Alpha [Alpha Architect]
We show that opportunistic insider traders can be identified through the profitability of their trades prior to quarterly earnings announcements (QEAs), and that opportunistic trading is associated with various other kinds of managerial and firm misconduct. The subsequent buys and sells of
- 8 years ago, 25 Jan 2016, 12:09pm -
Is Price Momentum a Brother From Another Mother? [Alpha Architect]
Momentum in firm fundamentals, i.e., earnings momentum, explains the performance of strategies based on price momentum. Earnings surprise measures subsume past performance in cross sectional regressions of returns on firm characteristics, and the time-series performance of price momentum strategies
- 8 years ago, 21 Jan 2016, 12:53pm -
Value Investing: Accruals, Cash Flows, and Operating Profitability [Alpha Architect]
Accruals are the non-cash component of earnings. They represent adjustments made to cash flows to generate a profit measure largely unaffected by the timing of receipts and payments of cash. Prior research finds that expected returns increase in firm profitability. However, firms with high accruals
- 8 years ago, 14 Jan 2016, 12:54pm -
Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? [Alpha Architect]
A really interesting paper hit the NBER wires recently. The central argument of the paper is that “rock star” thought leaders dominate a field, but when they die, new thought leaders are able to emerge. In summary, there seems to be a cost and a benefit attached to a powerful intellectual: On
- 8 years ago, 13 Jan 2016, 10:32am -
Interest Rates, Tax-Selling, and Stock Return Seasonality [Alpha Architect]
We show that interest rates drive mispricing at the turn of a tax period as investors face the trade-off between selling a temporarily-depressed stock this period and selling next period at fundamental value, but with tax implications delayed accordingly. We confi rm these patterns in US returns,
- 8 years ago, 8 Jan 2016, 11:33am -
Daily Academic Alpha: Value and Momentum in Vietnam [Alpha Architect]
An interesting out of sample test on return drivers in the Vietnamese market from 2006 to 2014. Not surprisingly, value and momentum show some mojo - Liquidity as well…size, not so much. But size only matters if you control your junk, apparently. This is in line with our own research and the
- 8 years ago, 5 Jan 2016, 09:58pm -
A Win for Socially Responsible Investing: Rethinking Sin Stocks [Alpha Architect]
I have a love-hate relationship with sin stocks. On one hand, my first big winning stock pick was Swisher Sweet Cigars, which nearly doubled a month after I bought it in 1998, thus proving that I was a stock picking genius and much self-satisfaction (at least until several years later when I lost
- 8 years ago, 4 Jan 2016, 11:07am -
‘Tis the Season for strange effects in the stock market [Alpha Architect]
The efficient market hypothesis suggests that stock prices are always “right” in the sense that stock prices reflect all available information. Of course, during tax season, fundamentals go out the window: I’m selling my losers, and letting my winners ride! And I’m not the only investor
- 8 years ago, 29 Dec 2015, 10:31pm -
Great Academic Research is Bursting at the Seams [Alpha Architect]
Having been a full-time academic financial economist in a former life (still dabble, when able), I became accustomed to my annual pilgrimage to the annual American Finance Association (AFA) meeting. For the uninitiated, the AFA annual meeting is a gathering of all the major brainpower in academic
- 8 years ago, 29 Dec 2015, 10:44am -
Avoid Firms with CFOs that Golf All the Time [Alpha Architect]
Chief financial officers are responsible for managing the financial reporting process. We test whether the quality of a firm’s financial reports is a function of the effort expended by the CFO. Using golfing records to measure leisure consumption, we first show that CFOs consume more leisure when
- 8 years ago, 17 Dec 2015, 08:11pm -
Are Stock Pricing Anomalies Driven by Risk or Mispricing? [Alpha Architect]
Using a sample of 97 stock return anomalies documented in published studies, we find that anomaly returns are 7 times higher on earnings announcement days and 2 times higher on corporate news days. The effects are similar on both the long and short sides, and they survive adjustments for risk
- 8 years ago, 15 Dec 2015, 06:29pm -
Value Investing Requires Patience...a LOT of Patience-Ask Cliff Asness [Alpha Architect]
Value investing was a lot easier in 2012 and 2013 when our value approach beat the market by a substantial margin and we had a reasonable edge on other active value players. But now that we have lived through 2014 and 2015, most value approaches (simple, complex, quant, human, small, large, etc.)
- 8 years ago, 10 Dec 2015, 11:38pm -
Expanding the Efficient Frontier with Value and Momentum Strategies [Alpha Architect]
Awww…modern portfolio theory…that feel-good construct I teach to all of my graduate-level finance students each year. Simply input 1) a vector of expected returns and 2) a covariance matrix into your computer, and voilà, you have your optimal portfolio weights. Like all things viewed with the
- 8 years ago, 9 Dec 2015, 06:28pm -