Understanding seasonality in financial markets requires recognizing how predictable return patterns can be influenced by investor behavior. One underexplored aspect of this is the impact of front-running—where traders anticipate seasonal trends and act early, shifting returns forward in time. We

The dominance of mega-tech stocks, particularly the “Magnificent 7,” in both U.S. and global equity indexes has a profound impact on factor portfolios. When constructing value-weighted smart beta strategies, these portfolios often end up heavily concentrated in a few individual stocks. This

Market practitioners often rely on experience-based wisdom to navigate currency markets, and one such widely held belief is that low dispersion in global bond yields signals weak future returns for carry trades (and high dispersion implies high future carry returns). While this intuition makes

In this study, we explore the application of simple spread trading strategies using Bitcoin ETFs and cryptocurrency infrastructure ETFs—two highly correlated asset classes due to the broader influence of cryptocurrency market movements. Given their strong relationship, this setup provides a

Inflation is one of the key macroeconomic forces shaping financial markets, influencing asset prices across the board. In our previous analysis, we examined how gold and Treasury prices react to changes in the inflation rate, uncovering patterns that suggested inflation dynamics also impact the US

Navigating the financial markets requires a keen understanding of risk sentiment, and one often-overlooked dataset that provides valuable insights is FINRA’s margin debt statistics. Reported monthly, these figures track the total debit balances in customers’ securities margin accounts—a key

Inflation significantly impacts the prices of gold and treasury bonds through various mechanisms. Gold is often viewed as a hedge against inflation, while treasury bonds exhibit a more complex relationship influenced by interest rates and investor behavior. This relationship between inflation, gold,

Can we truly rely on the opening price in OHLC data for backtesting? While the overnight drift effect is well-documented in a lot of asset classes, we investigated its presence in gold using the GLD ETF and then extended our analysis to the GDX – Gold Miners ETF, where we observed an unusually

Hello everyone, Over the last few months, we have received numerous messages asking us if we plan to continue with our successful quant research competition in 2025. Last year, we promised our readers that the Quantpedia Awards would be back! And now it’s again time to unveil what we have prepared

Building upon the established research on market seasonality and the potential for front-running to boost associated profits, this article investigates the application of seasonal strategies within the context of crisis hedge portfolios. Unlike traditional asset allocation strategies that may falter

Can we simplify the complexities of the stock market and distill them into a simple set of quantifiable metrics? A lot of academic papers suggest this, and they offer formulas that should make the life of a stock picker easier. Some of the most compelling methodologies within this realm are the

The general acceptance of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, was a blessing from Wall Street, which institutionalized them as ETFs for comprehensive access by the general public and institutional investors. There is little to no denying now that this new asset class is becoming more traditional,

Today’s research introduces a refined ETF asset momentum strategy by combining a correlation filter with selective shorting. While traditional long-short momentum strategies usually yield suboptimal results, the long leg proves effective on its own, and the correlation filter demonstrates

The year 2024 is nearly behind us, so it’s an excellent time for a short recapitulation. In the previous 12 months, we have been busy again (as usual) and have published over 70 short analyses of academic papers and our own research articles. The end of the year is a good opportunity to summarize

Seasonality plays a significant role in financial markets and has become an essential concept for both practitioners and researchers. This phenomenon is particularly prominent in commodities, where natural cycles like weather or harvest periods directly affect supply and demand, leading to

Active Share is a metric introduced to quantify the degree to which a portfolio differs from its benchmark index. It is expressed as a percentage, ranging from 0% (fully overlapping with the benchmark) to 100% (completely different). The concept gained popularity because it was believed that higher

Seasonality is a well-known phenomenon in the commodity markets, with certain sectors exhibiting predictable patterns of performance during specific times of the year. These patterns often attract investors who aim to capitalize on anticipated price movements, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. But

As interest in cryptocurrencies continues to surge, driven by each new price rally, crypto assets have solidified their position as one of the main asset classes in global markets. Unlike traditional assets, which primarily trade during standard working hours, cryptocurrencies trade 24/7, presenting

Our article explores a simple mean reversion trading strategy applied to FX futures, focusing on identifying undervalued and overvalued currencies to generate returns. Using FX futures rather than spot rates allows for the inclusion of interest rate differentials, simplifying the analysis. The

Our research will explore the intriguing phenomenon of the Pre-Holiday effect in commodities, particularly crude oil and gasoline. Historical data reveals a short-term price drift prior to major U.S. holidays, suggesting a trend in these markets. We hypothesize that this anomaly may be driven by

In this article, we explore the historical performance of sector momentum strategies and examine how their alpha has diminished over time. By analyzing the underlying causes behind this decline, we identify key factors contributing to the underperformance. Most importantly, we introduce an enhanced

Momentum is one of the most researched market anomalies, well-known and widely accepted in both public and academic sectors. Its concept is straightforward: buy an asset when its price rises and sell it when it falls. The goal is to take advantage of these trends to achieve better returns than a

Over the past few years, significant shifts in the financial landscape have reshaped the dynamics of global markets, including the cryptocurrency sector. Events such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, rising inflation rates, the soft landing scenario in the US economy, and the recent Bitcoin halving

Throughout history, geopolitical stress and tension has been ever-present. From ancient civilizations to today’s world, global dynamics have been largely shaped by wars, terrorism, and trade disputes. Financial markets, as always, have keenly observed and been significantly influenced as a result.

High-yield bond ETFs represent a unique financial vehicle: they are highly liquid instruments that hold inherently illiquid securities, creating a fertile ground for predictable market behaviors. Our latest research uncovers an intriguing anomaly within these ETFs, similar to those observed in the

In the complex world of financial markets, subtle patterns often reveal themselves through careful observation and analysis. Among these is the intriguing phenomenon we can call the “Lunch Effect,” a pattern observed in U.S. stock indexes where market performance tends to exhibit a distinct

One of the main reasons why the Pragmatic Asset Allocation Model was designed is to give investors a tax-efficient possibility to invest in a global equity portfolio with a lower risk than the passive buy&hold approach. Therefore, the PAA model is not the “absolute return” model but rather

The Internet (and especially the part related to finance, trading, and cryptocurrencies) can be dangerous and full of offers of guaranteed returns, pictures of forever-growing bank accounts, and guys with golden rings swimming in the bathtub filled with cash. The truth is usually less rosy.

Our new study aims to investigate the lead-lag effect between prominent, widely recognized stocks and smaller, less-known stocks with similar ticker symbols (for example, TSLA / TLSA), a phenomenon that has received limited attention in financial literature. The motivation behind this exploration

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), theory developed in the 1960s, states that stock prices reflect all available information, making it impossible to consistently earn above-average returns using this information. Nevertheless, numerous studies challenge this view by documenting anomalies that

The main goal of our new article is to explore the efficacy of passive versus active management strategies in the context of savings for long-term financial goals. By analyzing the performance of nine distinct asset classes, including Double Leveraged ETFs and an implementation of the Pragmatic

Hello all, Welcome to the Quantpedia Awards 2024 winners announcement. This is the moment we all have been waiting for, and today, we would like to acknowledge the accomplishments of the researchers behind innovative studies in quantitative trading. So, what do the top five look like, and what will

In the fast-paced world of cryptocurrencies, understanding market sentiment can provide a crucial edge. As investors and traders seek to anticipate the volatile movements of Bitcoin, innovative approaches are continuously explored. One such method involves leveraging Google Trends data to gauge

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cryptocurrency markets, understanding the underlying dynamics that drive price movements and investor sentiment can be a matter of survival. However, there are myriad facets of trading reality, and the only thing that we can do is to slowly understand them one

Cryptocurrencies are already one of the major asset classes. They fill the top pages of magazines and are a topic of a day to day conversation. There are a lot of ways to buy them through a lot of different channels. But some of the hardcore HODLers like to keep their coin portfolio safe – they

After years of waiting, the recent launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs marked a significant milestone in the cryptocurrency market, making Bitcoin even more accessible for investors. Spot ETFs provide a convenient and regulated way to gain exposure to Bitcoin without the need to hold the digital asset

The investment world witnessed a paradigm shift with the introduction of momentum strategies, a concept pioneered by Jagadeesh and Titman in their landmark 1993 study “Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency”. Their groundbreaking approach, hinged

Investing truly is an intense intellectual undertaking. For a Portfolio Manager (PM) to execute an investment, they must first convince themselves, then others, that the rationale behind the investment is sound. The variables they utilize in developing their rationale are of the upmost importance;

The aim of this article is multifold. It aims to answer the research question: does a portfolio consisting of top innovators outperform the S&P 500 index? To address this question, a strategy of investing long in top innovators according to their ranking is developed, and its performance is

Hello everyone, Two weeks ago, we promised you a surprise, and now it’s finally time to unveil what we have prepared for you :). Our Quantpedia Awards 2024 aims to be the premier competition for all quantitative trading researchers. If you have an idea in your head about systematic/quantitative

Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) funds are commonly associated with managed futures investing in futures and options, and are a subset of the broader hedge fund universe[1]. Beyond commodities, they have the flexibility to venture into other assets, including interest rates, currencies, fixed income

The primary motivation behind our study stems from an observation of the Global Tactical Asset Allocation (GTAA) strategies throughout the existing papers – the majority of them require relatively frequent rebalancing from the point of view of the ordinary investor. Portfolio rebalancing is

Investing in emerging markets (EM) or developed markets (DM) outside of the United States tends to follow cyclical trends. At times, it becomes popular and crowded to focus solely on U.S. stocks, while in other periods, the trend shifts to favor everything except U.S. equities. This inclination

The part of the attention of our own research from the last few months was a little skewed on the side of countries’ indices and their corresponding ETFs representing them, and we finally conclude our “trilogy” of investigation on the efficiency of these markets. Firstly, we analyzed

“Si vis pacem, para bellum“, is an old Roman proverb translated to English as “If you want peace, prepare for war”, and it is the main idea behind the military policy of a lot of modern national states. In the current globally interconnected world, waging a real “hot war” has very often

You may remember our blog post from the end of March, where we tested the current state-of-the-art LLM chatbot: Time flies fast. More than six months have passed since our last article, and half a year in a fast-developing field like Artificial intelligence feels like ten times more. So, we are here

In this article we are going to continue the discussion on portfolio insurance strategies. An exhaustive description of this methodology was already presented in the article Introduction to CPPI (https://quantpedia.com/introduction-to-cppi-constant-proportion-portfolio-insurance). This article will

Following the recent release of the popular large language model ChatGPT, the topic of machine learning and AI seems to have skyrocketed in popularity. The concept of machine learning is, however, a much older one and has been the topic of various research and technology projects over the last

Value investing originated as an investment strategy in which investors try to beat the stock market by looking for stocks that trade at a price below their intrinsic value or book value. Value investors do not subscribe to the efficient-market hypothesis, which suggests that stock prices always

Seasonality effects, one of the most fascinating phenomena in the world of finance, have captured the attention of investors and researchers worldwide. Since these anomalies are often driven by factors other than general market trends, they usually don’t correlate strongly with market movements,