The use of valuation multiples in selecting equity securities is well established in the literature, and we’ve covered the research on enterprise multiples here (here is a recent JPM on the topic). However, there are relevant questions as to the effectiveness of multiples when applied to national

There is a substantial body of evidence linking various accounting ratios to expected stock returns. One explanation of the links is that they could be explained by the accounting ratios being associated with systematic sources of risk. Alternatively, they could be associated with mispricing that

It happens very often that we work because we don’t see any alternatives. Our job may be annoying as hell, we may even hate it, but the reality seems like we don’t have any other options. We have a mortgage, we have a family to maintain, or our qualifications aren’t allowing us to do something

Shareholder activism has not grown from a campaign or AUM perspective recently Activist funds have not generated attractive returns The lack of outperformance is challenging to explain INTRODUCTION Active fund managers today are like deer caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic as the

In this project, we analyze different intraday trading strategies with Pivot Points. After defining different ways of calculating the Pivot Point, we do a Backtest with the most classic strategies and a different variant to those normally taught in textbooks. To learn about Pivot Point and how to

ETF Momentum Frank Weikai Li (Singapore Management University), et al. October 12, 2019 We document economically large momentum profits when sorting ETFs on returns over the past two to four years. A value-weighted, long-short strategy based on ETF momentum delivers Carhart (1997) four-factor alphas

Popular factors for government bond investment are “carry”, “momentum”, “value” and “defensive”. “Carry” depends on the steepness of the yield curve, which to some extent reflects aversion to risk and volatility. “Momentum” relates to medium-term directional trends, which in

Recently I was invited to talk with Stig and Preston on The Investor’s Podcast. I thank them for the opportunity and enjoyed the conversation! Below are some of the topics we discussed: What is factor investing? Which factors have historically performed the best? Should one use a single factor or

In this post, I share my vision for an Open Trading standard for communicating with online brokers using modern technologies. While looking for a way to add support for multiple brokers and data vendors to my open source Python trading library, I discovered that there's currently no way to

Over the past decade academics and practitioners alike have argued that multi-factor portfolios offer significant benefits to investors looking for enhanced and more diversified solutions. Among the papers making this argument is “The Death of Diversification is Greatly Exaggerated”, co-authored

Guest: Andreas Clenow is the Chief Investment Officer of ACIES Asset Management AG. He manages alternative investment funds for institutional and qualified investors. He has served as Nordic Manager for the Analytics Consulting division of Reuters Consulting, covering Sweden, Norway, Denmark,

Systematic trading is often synonymous with short-term trading frequencies in the retail quant trading space. Daily and intraday strategies tend to receive the bulk of the community's attention. The popularity of systematic cryptocurrency trading has put a further emphasis on short term trading

One compelling study that triggered Tuesday in the Quantifinder suggested the recent persistent upmove is unlikely to abruptly end. (This is a theme we have seen many times over the years.) It considers what happens after the market moves up at least 5 days in a row to a 50-day high, and then pulls

Concept: Opening Range Breakout (ORB) with Volatility Clustering (Large price moves tend to be followed by large price moves, and small price moves tend to be followed by small price moves). Research Question: Can we improve performance of the original volatility clustering model via Opening Range

In past research notes we have explored the impact of rebalance timing luck on strategic and tactical portfolios, even using our own Systematic Value methodology as a case study. In this note, we generate empirical timing luck estimates for a variety of specifications for simplified value, momentum,

AI & Data Science in Trading brings together experts in the use of AI and advanced data analytic techniques within asset management, primarily for finding alpha, managing risk and optimizing portfolios. Now in its fifth edition, rotating between the global financial hubs of NYC and London, this

Divergent thinking is what we learn in school when we are paying attention. It allows us to solve hard problems with one right answer. Convergent thinking is what happens when we stop paying attention and start doodling. Convergent thinking produces many answers, none of which are technically

In the market, it is crucial to spot the trend, but it is equally important to detect when the trend ends. Getting out of the trade is more difficult than entering the trade. In this blog, we will talk about one such technical indicator, the Parabolic SAR indicator, which helps in identifying when

Bond indices are frequently portrayed as featuring a lower quality composition than equity indices Analysing equity and bond indices in the US and emerging markets confirms this view Perhaps this explains why there is some alpha generation in fixed income INTRODUCTION While almost all fund managers

Inspired by recent headlines like Fear Overtakes Greed in IPO Market after WeWork Debacle and This Year’s IPO Class is Least Profitable since the Tech Bubble, today we’ll explore historical IPO data and next time we’ll look at the the performance of IPO driven-portfolios constructed during the

Endogenous risk arises from the interaction of financial market participants, as opposed to traded assets’ fundamental value. It often manifests as feedback loops after some exogenous shock. An important type of endogenous market risk is setback risk, which refers to the asymmetry of the upside

A negative October takes the State of Trend Following index in the red for the year. Please check below for more details. Detailed Results The figures for the month are: October return: -3.92% YTD return: -3.23% Below is the chart displaying individual system results throughout October: StateTF

Gregory Zuckerman is a writer at the Wall Street Journal and author of The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution. For anyone unfamiliar, Jim Simons is the brilliant-minded mathematician who founded hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. Using quantitative models and

Whenever you develop an algorithmic trading strategy, curve fitting is one of the most dangerous hazards. It will lead to severe losses in real time trading. This article will show you some ways to detect if the performance of your algorithmic trading strategy is based on curve fitting. Curve

It is well documented in the literature that over the long term, low-investment firms have outperformed high-investment firms.(1) This finding has led to the investment factor (CMA, or conservative minus aggressive) being incorporated into the leading asset pricing models—the four-factor Q model

At QuantStart we place an emphasis on fully automated systematic trading and the processes that surround it. However we should be careful to distinguish between the separate concepts of systemisation and automation. The former involves a trading strategy that can be codified into a set of rules,

In Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) or Dual Momentum (DM) strategies, they often will use trend-following or momentum to decide whether to invest in asset or not. I have two questions. One, how often does either trend-following or momentum they beat buy and hold? Two, of the two which one beats the

A new DFA article by Rizova and Saito (2019, “Investment and Expected Stock Returns”) (1) rehashes previous arguments in Fama and French (2006, 2015) on the investment factor. The core arguments are as follows: Valuation theory predicts that expected investment is negatively correlated with

In my last post, I stated my intention to write a series of posts about skew. Slight change of plan, since one loyal reader suggested that I write about kurtosis. I thought that might be fun, since I haven't thought about kurtosis much, and the literature on kurtosis isn't as well

When it comes to the world’s most secretive hedge fund any content is worthwhile to read. I finished the book is 3 days and had to re-read a couple more chapters to ensure I fully absorbed the couple nuggets in there. I would recommend this book to everyone! The mystery behind how Simons

For readers interested in getting signals and analytics on hundreds of ETFs and individual stocks our Investor IQ website is currently live and free during our beta-testing phase. We will be adding new data and analytics gradually over time as well as improving website functionality. The Economic

Recent studies of startup activity in the U.S. find that only roughly 10–15% of startups are founded by women. There are a number of potential explanations including gender differences in technical training or risk preferences. However, many have also speculated that part of the gender gap may, in

We have shown previously that it is possible to time factors using value and momentum but that the benefit is not large. By constructing a simple model for factor timing, we examine what accuracy would be required to do better than a momentum-based timing strategy. While the accuracy required is not

In the past, I shared thoughts about the need to combine creative and organized thinking in order to generate investment alpha. “A robust investment process” and “a strict disciplined application” are concepts that one often hears in typical quant and fundamental investment teams. These are

Real estate stocks featured moderate correlations to stock markets over the last 30 years However, diversification benefits for equity portfolios were only marginal Other strategies provide similar yield and downside protection characteristics INTRODUCTION Surveys often reveal investor behaviour

A subscriber requested review of an analysis concluding that combining economic trend and market trend signals enhances market timing performance. Specifically, per the example in the referenced analysis, we look at combining: The 10-month simple moving average (SMA10) for the broad U.S. stock

The possibilities for quantifying risk in portfolio analytics seems to be limited only by the imagination of researchers. Indeed, you can find dictionaries that wade through an ever-lengthening list of indicators. But any short list of robust metrics surely deserves to include drawdown, which offers

This analysis was inspired by EconomPic and Meb Faber. Here we test a simple strategy that goes long Global Stocks (ACWI) when they make a new all-time month-end high, otherwise US bonds. The takeaway: Don’t fear buying stock (indices) when they close at all-time highs. A new high shouldn’t be

In this tutorial I explain how to adapt the traditional k-fold CV to financial applications with purging, embargoing, and combinatorial backtest paths.

At QuantStart we often receive email queries about the possibility of making a career transition to quantitative finance, particularly for individuals who currently consider themselves mid-career. In a more general sense we have previously discussed whether it is possible to become a quant during

No, it’s not a good idea, which should surprise no one. The fact that it is a GREAT idea, well, that should surprise everyone. Most investors fret when markets hit new highs, but should they? The below is inspired by our friend Jake @ Econompic, who examined the following query: “What if you

Support Vector Machines were widely used a decade back, but now they have fallen out of favour. The below data from google trends can establish this more clearly. (Source: Google Trends) Why did this happen? As more and more advanced models were developed, support vector machines fell out of favour.

Monday not only saw SPY make a 50-day high, but it was also the 2nd day in a row with an unfilled gap up. The study below is from last night’s letter and was previously discussed several other times in the subscriber letter (click here for free trial). It examined other times SPY left at least 2

As the book about the most successful quant, Jim Simons, comes out tomorrow (“The Man Who Solved the Market”), I felt inspired to review the ‘recent press’ on quant investing, but with a focus on the quantamental theme - where quantitative and qualitative ideas can ‘collaborate’ well to

This is a summary of the recent performance of a wide range of excellent Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) strategies, net of transaction costs. These strategies are sourced from books, academic papers, and other publications. While we don’t (yet) include every published TAA model, these strategies

While trend following may help investors avoid prolonged drawdowns, it is susceptible to whipsaw where false signals cause investors to either buy high and sell low (realizing losses) or sell low and buy high (a missed opportunity). Empirical evidence suggests that using economic data in the United

The trends in factor performance are similar in emerging and developed markets Factor returns were higher in emerging than in developed markets However, higher transaction costs need to be considered carefully INTRODUCTION Capital markets of developed countries like the US are highly efficient and

Financial market prices and return indices are non-stationary time series, even in logarithmic form. This means not only that they are drifting, but also that their distribution changes overtime. The main purpose of de-trending is to mitigate the effects of non-stationarity on estimated price or

Following on from my last post, below is a selection of the typical resultant output from the Bayesopt Library minimisation 3 3 2 2 2 8 99 22 30 1 3 3 2 3 2 39 9 25 25 1 2 2 3 2 2 60 43 83 54 3 2 1 2 2 2 2 0 90 96 43 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 43 33 1 2 3 2 3 2 2 0 62 98 21 2 2 2 2 2 18 43 49 2 2 2 3 2 4 1 2 0