Bond futures are often assumed to be more tax-efficient than bond ETFs. My analysis indicates that this assumption is frequently incorrect. Although investors might view the 60/40 tax treatment of futures as advantageous, a futures strategy faces several challenges compared to a bond ETF, including

Empirical research, including the 2020 study “An Empirical Evaluation of Tax-Loss Harvesting Alpha” and the 2023 study “Expected Loss Harvest from Tax-Loss Harvesting with Direct Indexing,” has found that tax-loss harvesting strategies in separately managed accounts (SMAs) can improve the

Semivolatility-managed portfolios Daniel Batista da Silva (U. of Geneva) and M. Fernandes (Getulio Vargas Fnd.) July 2024 There is ample evidence that volatility management helps improve the risk-adjusted performance of momentum portfolios. However, it is less clear that it works for other factors

For anyone looking to dive into the world of quantitative finance and systematic trading, Python is an indispensable tool. As the go-to programming language for many quant developers, Python offers a vast ecosystem of libraries that streamline everything from data analysis to strategy execution.

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.

How do you eat an elephant? I have wanted to write a reading list but I have been apprehensive since I didn’t want to include too much and wanted also to explain why the books were in the list. If you want to trade crypto there is no point reading the Hull interest rate model book. This list

This paper aims to test an effective rebalancing method that prioritizes trades with the strongest signals to capture more of the factor premium while reducing turnover and trading costs. The authors coin the term “smart rebalancing” to capture the essence of their ideas. The empirical tests

"Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.” Burt Rutan. In the 1960s, NASA was racing to land a man on the moon, and the success of the Apollo 11 mission hinged on the performance of the Lunar Module (LM). The LM had to operate flawlessly in the harsh, unpredictable

Summer has a way of getting away from you. That is as much relevant for blog writing as it is for life. Nonetheless, before summer ends we wanted to dust off our series on regime prediction and close the loop on the remaining techniques we had yet to investigate. That is, in our last post we

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

"There is no magic in magic; it's all in the details.” Walt Disney. As most creative people are, I'm a huge fan of Walt Disney and his attention to detail. One of the most famous stories about his attention to detail involves a seemingly small problem with light bulbs on Main

The research questions are as follows: How does AI perform compared to human analysts in predicting stock returns? Under what circumstances do human analysts retain their advantage over AI? What is the impact of combining human analysts with AI (the “Man + Machine” approach) on stock prediction

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

Allow me to share a few thoughts that came up as we brought together two exceptional minds in the trading technology space to talk about their back-testing applications. In the blue corner representing Python - Jason Strimpel, an experienced quantitative risk manager, trader and technology leader,

Several months ago, Steven (my trading buddy) and I were talking about bear markets. I felt that bear markets seem shorter and shallower now compared to the past. I thought this would be a quick and easy research project and blog post. Nope. As I generated numbers, more questions and research paths

Cryptocurrencies have been acknowledged as an emerging asset class with a relatively low correlation to traditional asset classes and independent drivers of their long-term performance (see for an example excellent papers by Harvey et al (2022) and Adams at al (2024)). A year ago in Summer of 2023,

Trend-following managed futures strategies offer a compelling opportunity for investors to diversify their portfolios beyond traditional stocks and bonds. By capitalizing on persistent trends across a wide range of liquid futures markets – from commodities to currencies to equity and bond

“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” Pablo Picasso. Picasso painted “Woman with a Book,” one of his masterpieces, a few months before my grandmother was born. He was a legendary artist, a true master whose creativity and invention made him one of the most

In TASC 8/24, John Ehlers presented a new algorithm for separating the trend line from a price curve, using spectral analysis functions. Trend lines are only useful for trading when they have little lag, so that trend changes can immediately trigger trade signals. The usual suspects like SMA, WMA,

While the research, commentary and speculation about the failure of value factor strategies over the last decade or two continues along a number of avenues, we haven’t yet seen a movement back towards fundamental analysis or a discounted cash flow (DCF) approach. In this paper, the authors argue

I was re-reading some older posts, and I realised I owed some readers a follow up. Hopefully I will be forgiven that this took 2 years. This post will be short and the core of the ideas are a follow up to the original article here. The key takeaways from the original article are: IO and Logging

As a result of the trading required to capture the premiums that drive factor strategies investors may face significant tax liabilities. The challenge for the portfolio manager is to incorporate tax-efficient trading practices at each rebalance to mitigate tax impacts and ultimately avoid

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman Richard Feynman was one of the great scientists and physicists of our time, truly one of the great minds of humanity. This is one of my favorite quotes from him. It emphasizes the

Wallstreetbets has become an increasingly prominent source of investment research, particularly for risk-seeking retail investors. The excitement from the GameStop episode resulted in the forum growing from 500,000 users in July of 2018 to 10.7 million users by June 2021. Do their recommendations

This is a test of the “Excess Earnings Yield Dynamic” valuation strategy based on the paper Man Doth Not Invest by Earnings Yield Alone by White and Haghani of Elm Wealth. The strategy dynamically splits the portfolio between stocks and TIPS based on “excess earnings yield”, which is the

About a month ago, I hit a major milestone with Quantifiable Edges. I passed Cal Ripken. For those that don’t know, Cal Ripken was a Hall-of-Fame shortstop (and also a 3rd baseman) with the Baltimore Orioles from 1981-2001. He holds the record for consecutive games played (2,632). His streak

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." James Joyce. I think this is my best post so far. It's not because of any particular great results (although they are nice). It's because I got help from three extraordinary people: a Market Wizard and a couple of traders who talked about

What is a Bayesian solution? Good question. Bayesian statistics, named for Thomas Bayes, is a structured framework that allows one to update the probability of an event occurring as new data about that event becomes available. In the context of the infamous Factor Zoo in investing, Bayes’ rule

There have been a great deal of studies assessing the stylized facts of Equity volatility: The tendency of volatility regimes to persist The higher volatility regimes' association with lower forward returns We’re extending these by uncovering cross-asset lead-lag relationships that -

"It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.” Albert Einstein. I love this quote from Einstein. It shows the importance of persistence and perseverance in the face of challenges. This mindset emphasizes the value of hard work and resilience, which is

There are 2 good reasons to buy put options: Because you think they are cheap Because you want downside protection. You want to use the skewed payoff profile to protect a portfolio against large downside moves without capping your upside too much. The first requires a pricing model. Or, at the

While publicly traded stocks, bonds, and real estate have their prices constantly adjusted throughout the day, leading to lots of volatility, private capital managers have significant discretion as to when and how they mark-to-market or mark-to-model their portfolios (typically valued quarterly).

The Finance AI Challenge: An Evaluation of the Top Six Free Web-based AI Models David Krause (Marquette University) June 2024 This article evaluates six free web-based AI models-ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, and Meta AI-in their performance on finance-related tasks. Utilizing a

This is a test of Pragmatic Asset Allocation from Vojtko and Javorská of Quantpedia. While the strategy is “tactical” (i.e. changes allocation over time in response to market conditions), it’s also designed to ensure tax efficiency. We track many tactical strategies that have been tax

Managed futures and market-neutral factor investing offered uncorrelated returns to stocks However, these two alternative strategies exhibited similar trends in correlations to equities Having exposure to both does not generate superior diversification benefits INTRODUCTION At first glance, the

In the realm of trend following, one prevailing assumption is that highly correlated assets should not be traded together, as they are unlikely to provide diverse opportunities. However, this article will challenge this notion by delving into the nuances of trade correlations versus price

“Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.” Jack Bogle. Harry Markowitz's Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) revolutionized the field of investment management by providing a quantitative framework for portfolio construction and diversification. He is considered the

In previous posts, we’ve explored how massive diversification serves as a crucial tool for outlier hunters—not only to provide correlation benefits in chaotic regimes but also to increase our chances of capturing rare market events. It’s the frequency of these outliers in our trade

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a broad field that enables computers to process and analyze unstructured textual data. In this article, we present several proprietary Brain datasets derived from news articles, SEC regulatory filings, and earnings calls, along with case studies implemented in

It is well documented in the literature that retail investors have an irrational preference (from a traditional finance perspective) for investing in high-volatility stocks which have lottery-like distributions—those that exhibit positive skewness and excess kurtosis (fat tails). Studies, such as

Capital market assumptions1 (CMAs) are forecasts of future risk/return characteristics for broad asset classes over the next 5 to 20 years produced by leading investment managers, consultants and advisors2. These forecasts are well-reasoned, analytically rigorous assumptions about uncertain future

Let me introduce our research paper co-authored with Alexander Lipton and Vladimir Lucic for hedging of impermanent loss of liquidity provision (LP) staked at Decentralised Exchanges (DEXes) which employ Uniswap V2 and V3 protocols. Uniswap V3 protocol allows liquidity providers to concentrate

Despite stellar returns of some multi-strategy hedge funds, the category has not gained market share Multi-strategy hedge funds are highly correlated to equities, offering limited diversification benefits Replication ETFs offer the same unfavorable characteristics INTRODUCTION In 2022 multi-strategy

Portfolio optimization is a method for allocating assets in a portfolio in order to meet specific objectives. For example, it can be used to construct a portfolio of assets with the objective of minimizing risk while also maximizing returns. Portfolio optimization can be a useful technique for

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, was also an investor. Newton reportedly invested in the South Sea Company, a British joint-stock company, and initially made substantial

“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” Socrates. I love this quote. Humility is such an important virtue, especially in trading. If someone already knows something, their curiosity is gone. Their desire to learn is weak or non-existent. After I published the first article, some people

This paper explores several key aspects related to household consumption behavior during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, with a focus on the impact of salient adverse macroeconomic announcements. Spending Less After (Seemingly) Bad News Garmaise, Levi and Lustig Journal of Finance, 2024 A

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

Over the period January 2000-March 2024, the S&P 500 Index returned 7.4% per annum, outperforming the return of 2.2% per annum of Japanese large stocks (MSCI/Nomura data) by 5.2 percentage points per annum. The outperformance has been even greater since 2010, with the S&P 500 Index returning

Our last post finished up examining the three different methods used to predict market regimes in the Gold Miners ETF, GDX – namely, clustering, Gaussian Mixture Methods (GMMs), and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). We found GMMs performed the best in terms of proof-of-concept. But there was a lot of