Summary Most investment strategies can be broken down into the risk premia they wish to harvest, whether it is vanilla like the equity risk premium or more exotic, like the value premium. Different risk premia mature at different rates. Value can take years to mature while momentum can take only a

Summary We run a U.S. sector-based, long-or-flat trend following strategy. With largely sideways market action, 2015 was a tough year for trend following, especially for long-only trend following, since the large negative trend in the Energy sector could not be monetized. We believe portfolio

There is no holy grail investment style that will out-perform in all market environments. Being systematic and disciplined in our use of active strategies is the best way to capture out-performance because we don’t know when the out-performance will happen. Diversifying across several active

One of the most frequent questions we receive when it comes to tactical strategies is “how do I benchmark this?” Another way of asking this question is, “how else can I get this exposure and what would it cost me?” Strategies that provide downside protection often come with some sort of

This commentary is available for download here. There is an adage on Wall Street that comes around every January. And every January, we debunk it. In As Goes January, So Goes the Year, we remind readers that while the performance of markets in January will, by definition, influence the total return

While prior 5-year returns for the S&P 500 have been spectacular, prior 10-year returns are still muted. Does this mean the bull market still has room to run? Prior returns, however, are not a great predictor of future returns. Fundamentals, not returns, tend to be mean-reverting. Current

Summary We break portfolio construction into two unique phases: signal generation and the rules that determine allocations. We use the analogy that this process is like cooking, where our signals are the ingredients and our allocation rules are the recipe. While most firms focus their research on

Summary Traditionally, stocks have been used for growth and bonds for safety Therefore, investors looking for long-term capital appreciation tended to allocate heavily towards stocks while investors concerned about preservation allocate more heavily towards bonds With an anemic forecast for equity

A few weeks ago, we discussed a method that we implemented to construct more realistic indices using an estimate of time weighted average prices (TWAP) for trade execution. Prior to October, whenever our models required a rebalance, we assumed that it occurred at the opening price on the following

Summary Due diligence is an important practice in our industry – and one that should be ever-evolving. There are some questions we receive on due diligence questionnaires that are well intentioned, but we think can be improved. Finally, in doing due diligence, we think that after the question

Summary In the current “Fed on / Fed off” market environment, dollar exposure matters Currency hedged exposures have exploded in popularity in the equity space Using the experience of Canadian investors, we demonstrate the large impact that currency can have on fixed income Investors buying

I just came across a great post on sector investing by Dave Mazza, Head of Research for SSGA's ETF and mutual fund businesses. There is a lot of great information he walks through, but I thought there were three tidbits particularly interesting to us as risk managers. First, he points out that

In due diligence, we often evaluate summary statistics like annualized return, volatility, alpha, beta, up-capture, and down-capture. These statistics can unify years of returns into a single number. While this can be convenient for comparing different strategies, it fails to provide adequate

Summary Due diligence often focuses on the three Ps: people, philosophy, and process. There is an important 4th P: performance. When a portfolio has a consistent process, performance can ebb and flow as the strategy goes in or out of favor. For example, value stocks have been out of favor for 8

Summary Backtests should be, and frequently are, evaluated with scrutiny and skepticism While hypothetical results – backtested or live – are reported as a single, precise number, investors will have different performance based on In most hypothetical results, this execution factor is often

Summary We often hear trend following being referred to as “market timing” In all active strategies, timing is an important concept Market timing is a distinct process whereby investors try to predict the future Momentum is reactionary, not predictive, and is therefore no more a form of market

Summary Trend-following can be used as an objective methodology to seek to participate with market growth and protect against significant declines Common models may work on average but can fail in very specific scenarios Parabolic moves are particularly tough for simple trend following methods to

"Taking less risk than is optimal is not safer; it just locks in a worse outcome. Taking more risk than is optimal also results in a worse outcome, and often leads to complete disaster." -- Aaron Brown, Red Blooded Risk (2011) In our new white paper, we explore how tactical strategies can

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF “SPY” fell more than 6% in August Measured against other monthly returns, August 2015 was the worst month since 2012 “Monthly” returns are arbitrary and skew our understanding of market moves Since 2012, there have been several -6%, or near -6%, return periods

Frugal Fran is a 25-year old investor at the beginning of her career making $40,000 per year. Financially savvy, she has already started planning for her retirement. She plans to retire at age 65 and follow an "own your age" policy for her stock/bond mix. Fran projects a salary increase of

Summary In 2015, we’ve seen 40 “1%” days – days where the market was up or down at least 1% – in the S&P 500 Since 1958, the S&P 500 has experienced, on average, 54 1% days Being currently below average does not imply we should expect to see more volatility in the fall We’ve

Numerous marketing pieces circulating around the web show the detriment that trying to time the market can have on a portfolio. These pieces often look similar to this chart, which shows the cumulative growth of $1 invested in the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) assuming that a given number of best days are

We have a pretty arbitrary practice in the financial services industry: we reset the performance clock of portfolios to zero every January. Consider this hypothetical scenario: it’s December and markets are up 20% for the year. They even got a nice 5% pop in the last month. The clock strikes

I was recently quoted in ETF.com and its sister publication, ETF Report, in an article titled Global Sector Investing in Early Stages. The article discusses global sectors – and in particular, global sector ETFs – and why they haven't seen the growth of their domestic peers. At Newfound, we

Summary Rising interest rates are on the horizon … somewhere Yield curve dynamics – including the absolute level of rates, their direction of change, and the slope of the yield curve – all play an important role in the returns for managed futures The cost of carry in shorting fixed-income

In May 2015, Huseyin Gulen and Ralitsa Petkova published "Absolute Strength: Exploring Momentum in Stock Returns" (SSRN). In the paper they outline their new concept of absolute strength momentum. Momentum, in its traditional form, was a relative strength concept. Momentum took the

After publishing our Two Centuries of Momentum article last week, we received a number of requests for our thoughts on the recent underperformance of multi-asset, relative strength portfolios. Now, we tend to fall more on the trend following side of momentum. So we wanted to spend some time talking

Summary Diversification and trend-following often fail to protect investors in sudden, tail-risk events By being constantly hedged to such events, investors can help manage this risk, but remaining hedged requires paying an often significant “insurance premium” Spot CBOE VIX would be a great

A momentum-based investing approach can be confusing to investors who are often told that “chasing performance” is a massive mistake and “timing the market” is impossible. Yet as a systematized strategy, momentum sits upon nearly a quarter century of positive academic evidence and a century

The financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 highlighted the importance of downside risk management. Many managers that protected capital during this period saw their AUM balloon. Some of these same managers underperformed in the post-crisis years. This underperformance should be anything but surprising. We

This week we received an email from an advisor that echoes some calls we’ve been receiving lately. We thought it would make a great topic for us to cover in our commentary this week. The email read: We’re seeing a lot of negative indicators in the market right now, and seeing commentary from

Summary Trend-following is one of the oldest investment methods Labeled as technical analysis, trend-following went largely un-researched by academics Research of cross-sectional momentum exploded after Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman published their seminal 1992 study, but time-series

Harry Markowitz, father of modern portfolio theory, has a new paper out with Sander Gerber and Punit Pujara titled Enhancing multi-asset portfolio construction under Modern Portfolio Theory with a robust co-movement measure. You can download it here. The big take away is the introduction of a new

A PDF of this commentary can be downloaded here. Summary Dalbar studies tell us that investors often sell after losses and wait for markets to reclaim high water marks before re-entering – behavior that is guaranteed to lead to underperformance Other, more dynamic, approaches may help investors

Nassim Taleb, author of the Inconcerto series and, most famously, The Black Swan, is out with a new paper called Error, Dimensionality, and Predictability. You can get a copy here. To quote some of the scary bits ... From the abstract: We show how adding random variables from any distribution makes

This week we wanted to spend some time digging into performance of our Risk Managed U.S. Sectors (“RMUS”) and our Multi-Asset Income (“MAI”) portfolios. At Newfound, we generally break portfolio construction into two pieces: (1) the signals that drive our tactical decisions, and (2) the

We recently published an article on S&P's Indexology blog that looks at some of the more practical aspects of harvesting the size premium - a premium earned by owning smaller stocks. In our U.S. Factor Defensive Equity strategy, we hold ETFs that aim to capture premiums from value, size,

We would venture that there is a strong correlation between the amount of ink spilled about an asset class or sector and its volatility. So given that the energy sector fell nearly 5.5% in the last month without much interest is somewhat curious. Or, is it? First, let's establish whether our

Benjamin Graham, father of value investing, once said: “in the short run, the market is like a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” The psychology factor that can dominate market returns and volatility in the short-run is often washed out in long-run annualized returns,

The theory behind the glide path is easily distilled: as we grow older and approach retirement, we transition from an primary objective of growth to one of capital preservation. Our allocation profile, therefore, should follow this transition. Close to retirement, when capital preservation is

As a tactical asset management firm, we seek to offer a full range of downside risk managed investment strategies, covering all parts of an investor's portfolio. We believe that controlling drawdown and smoothing volatility is a critical objective, as periods of capital loss often coincide with

Many recent articles discuss rising rates with a focus on how to weather them along with some predictions of when they will occur and how much they will rise. Duration is a common theme among the articles since it quantifies how much a particular bond is likely to lose when rates rise. We've

Warren Buffet famously said to "never invest in a business you can't understand." The same advice should undoubtedly be applied to pooled investment vehicles. The advent and rapid growth of the ETF has made it easier than ever for investors to know what they own. Take the Financial

As we announced a few weeks back, our own Nathan Faber won 2nd place in the 2015 NAAIM Wagner Award paper competition for his research paper The Search for Crisis Alpha: Weathering the Storm Using Relative Momentum. Here's the abstract: Tactical strategies are becoming more prevalent in the

As we announced a few weeks ago, our very own Andrew Gogerty won 3rd place in the 2015 NAAIM Wagner Award paper competition for his research paper Momentum AND Diversification: A powerful risk-adjusted combination. Here's the abstract: Diversification is discussed in nearly every portfolio

In keeping up with my research reading, I came across a white paper from J.P. Morgan titled Defining Absolute Return Investing in Fixed Income. A graph on one of the last pages caught my eye: JPMorgan - Defining Absolute Return Investing in Fixed Income The stunning non-normality of the

First: the takeaways Expected return for an asset class is a combination of carry and price appreciation If carry is high enough, it can potentially dwarf price depreciation due to rising rates Higher carry assets (e.g. high yield bonds, MLPs, REITs, bank loans, EM debt, et cetera) have historically

Newfound will be hosting its next monthly strategy review session on Thursday, May 14th from 2:00- 2:30PM EST. We’re fortunate enough to have a guest panelist joining us: Brett Hammond from MSCI. He will be discussing factor-based investing and MSCI’s portfolio construction methodologies that

Frequent readers of this blog know that I am somewhat obsessed with the concept of timing luck and portfolio tranching, with the ultimate goal of reducing the variance of active returns. For those less familiar with the topic, you can read our introductory white paper here. I recently wrote a more

In the ETF world, average bid/ask spread is one of the most widely quoted metrics for liquidity. And average bid/ask spread is indeed important when evaluating ETFs. The chart below shows the average bid/ask spread (in bps of closing price) for each of the sixteen ETFs that we use in our Multi-Asset