Last year when bitcoin had its fourth drawdown of 80% in the past ten years, I thought It might be a good time to reenter that market. Having traded digital assets in 2017, I was familiar with the reasons for owning bitcoin. I won’t reiterate them here. You can find information on bitcoin,

There are many ways to use momentum. Some are better than others. Let us look at some of the best approaches. Stock Momentum In 2018, Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) issued a report on the performance of all public momentum funds from June 2003 through 2017. Only one fund had outperformed the

Our first look at calendar influences was in analyzing the best time during the month to execute dual momentum trades. Studies here, here, and here show that stocks perform best early in the month. This is when institutional investors make changes to their portfolios. Prices then are most

Corey Hoffstein of Newfound Research recently wrote an article called, “Fragility Case Study: Dual Momentum GEM.” Corey starts out saying my dual momentum approach is the strategy he sees implemented the most among do-it-yourself tactical investors. Corey then said several investors bemoaned

Happy New Year! In case you missed them, here were our most popular posts in 2018: Extended Backtest of Global Equity Momentum My book had dual momentum results from 1974 through 2013. With the acquisition of additional data, we are now able to show results back to 1950. We also explain why 1950 is

In 2013, I created my Global Equities Momentum (GEM) model that applied dual momentum to stock and bond indices. We hold U.S. or non-U.S. stock indices when stocks are strong. Bonds are a safe harbor when stocks are weak. When my book was published in 2014, I had Barclays bond index data back to

As the surge of boomer retirements continues, commentators have given new thought to what safe withdrawal rates are for retirement accounts. The topic is especially significant given two additional factors. First, retirement balances are shockingly low for boomers (Ghilarducci 2015)[1]. Second,

I began my investment career in 1974. In 1976 I left a large retail brokerage firm to join a premier investment bank. I had both retail and institutional clients. So I had a well-rounded knowledge of Wall Street. The 1970s was soon after the dark ages of investing. Modern portfolio theory existed in

Momentum is one of the most researched topic in financial market literature. A search of the SSRN database on momentum will turn up around 1000 papers written over the past three years and 3000 papers in total. With so much information available, it should not be surprising that many analysts have

One of the tenets of modern portfolio theory is that you cannot generally beat the market after transaction costs. Yet academic researchers have shown that momentum consistently beats the market. Other factors besides momentum have also cast doubt on the efficacy of the efficient market hypothesis.

Years ago, when was asked to recommend investment books, I often suggested some about the psychological issues influencing investor behavior. They focused on investor fear and greed to show “what fools these mortals be.” Here are some examples: Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial

There have been hundreds of research papers on relative strength momentum since the seminal work by Jegadeesh and Titman in 1993. [1] Relative momentum has been shown to work in and out-of-sample within and across most asset classes. Theoretical results have been consistent, persistent, and robust.

According to S&P DJ Indices, 92% of all actively managed stock funds failed to beat their benchmarks over the past 15 years. This should come as no surprise. Similar results were published more than 20 years ago. This information has caused a move away from active stock selection and toward

According to Morningstar, as of June 2016, the assets in smart beta exchange traded products totaled $490 billion. BlackRock forecasts smart beta using size, value, quality, momentum, and low-volatility will reach $1 trillion by 2020 and $2.4 trillion by 2025. This annual growth rate of 19% is

Overfitting the data is a serious problem when constructing financial models. One way to guard against this is to have lots of data. This helps you determine if your results are robust by seeing how they hold up over different time periods. But this assumes the underlying market dynamics remain

Like most investors, those using momentum are often guilty of chasing performance. In fact, momentum requires that we do this. But it should be done in a disciplined and systematic way. Performance chasing should not be due to myopia, irrational loss aversion, or other psychological biases.

I have been looking forward to Wes Gray and Jack Vogel's new book, Quantitative Momentum. It is the only book besides my own Dual Momentum that relies on academic research to develop systematic momentum strategies. My book uses a macro approach of applying momentum to indices and asset classes.

A highlight of the 2016 Morningstar ETF Conference was the keynote address by the former leader of U.S. Navy Seal Team Six, Rob O’Neill. Chief O’Neill shared some stories about his training and operations as an elite Navy Seal. The take away lessons from his talk were the importance of

As with many people these days, most of my investment information comes from the internet. It has taken me years to compile a group of research-oriented blogs and websites that I have found most useful. Here is my list: Investment Blogs Quantocracy: This is an aggregator of quantitative trading

Some say that bull markets climb a wall of worry. This is good news for those already in the market. Worriers will help the market go higher later when they finally decide to jump on the bandwagon. Herding, representativeness, and regret aversion (fear of losing out on future profits) can eventually

Because I have been an investment professional for more than 40 years, I sometimes get asked my opinion about the markets. These questions usually come from those who invest without a systematic approach toward investing. Here are some typical questions and answers: Question: How much do you think

There are many investors who prefer to remain invested in stocks at all times. Perhaps they think tactical allocation is some kind of voodoo. Maybe they have a strong psychological bias against occasional whipsaw losses and do not mind bear market drawdowns. Maybe they have institutional constraints

Last month a millennial emailed me saying he liked my book. But he wondered if the outperformance of dual momentum would disappear if he used dollar cost averaging (DCA) because he would not be able to buy cheaply during bear markets. This is because dual momentum reduces bear market drawdowns. I

In the words of Asness et al (2014), “No other factor…has nearly as long a track record, as much out-of-sample evidence (including across time, geography and even security type), or as strong and reliable a return premium as momentum.” They were speaking only of relative strength momentum.

Those who have read my momentum research papers, book, and this blog should know that simple dual momentum has handily and consistently outperformed buy-and-hold. The following chart shows the 10- year rolling excess return of our popular Global Equities Momentum (GEM) dual momentum model compared

Several months ago we posted an article called “Bring Data” where we showed the importance of having abundant data for system development and validation. This was further reinforced to us recently when someone brought us some additional U.S. stock sector data. Previously, we only had sector data

Multi-factor investing that combines value, momentum, quality/profitability, or low volatility factors is today’s hot new investment approach. There has been an explosion of multi-factor ETFs recently with nine of the fourteen existing U.S. multi-factor funds coming to market this year, and five

I have always looked favorably upon do-it-yourself investing (DIY). It was a prominent feature of my own book. So I’ve been looking forward to DIY Financial Advisor: A Simple Solution to Build and Protect Your Wealth by Wes Gray, Jack Vogel, and David Foulke (GVF), the managing members of Alpha

When doing financial modeling, one of the first things to look at is if your empirical work makes sense. In other words, are there valid economic reasons why a model should work? This can help you avoid drawing erroneous conclusions based on creative data mining.[1] Next, you should look for

After winning two consecutive national championships, the Green Bay Packers lost a game due to sloppy play. Coach Lombardi called a meeting the very next day to get his team back to fundamentals. When all the players were assembled, Lombardi held a football high up in the air and declared,

One of the most popular research papers on momentum is “Value and Momentum Everywhere” by Asness, Moskowitz, and Pedersen. In June 2013, this was published in the prestigious Journal of Finance. I have an earlier blog post which discussed that paper. However, one important item slipped by me

Sometimes I get asked how well momentum has done the past year or the past several years. If I am in a snarky mood that day, I'll respond, "What will that tell you?" The truth of the matter is that, in most cases, short-term performance is indistinguishable from noise and cannot tell

Stop losses are a form of trend following in which you switch from risky assets, such as stocks, to a risk-free or fixed income asset after there are pre-determined cumulative losses. The random walk hypothesis (RWH) was widely accepted in the 1960s and 1970s. It was synonymous with market

Gogi Grewal is an engineer and astute financial analyst who has been following my work for a number of years. He has an excellent grasp of dual momentum. Since Gogi lives in Canada, he decided to research the best way for non-US investors to utilize dual momentum. Gogi has generously offered to

Years ago when I first started studying momentum, two things stood out in my mind. The first was most momentum research focused on cross-sectional stock studies looking at the future performance of stocks that had been strong versus stocks that had been weak. This was what interested academics most,

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), also known as sustainable or responsible investing, is the application of ethical as well as financial considerations in making investment decisions. SRI therefore recognizes and incorporates societal needs and benefits. SRI may first date back to the Quakers

I used to always cut my round fruits and vegies in the wrong directions. I finally got around this problem by turning them in the opposite direction to the way I initially wanted to cut them. Similarly, many investors and investment managers are making investment decisions the wrong way and need to

Until recently, the longest back test using stock market data was Geczy and Samonov’s 2012 study of relative strength momentum called “212 Years of Price Momentum: The World’s Longest Backtest: 1801-2012”. The length of that study has now been exceeded by an 800 year backtest of trend