Quantocracy

Quant Blog Mashup

ST

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/19/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Monday, 03/19/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • You Are Not a Monte-Carlo Simulation [Flirting with Models]

    Even when an investment has a positive expected average growth rate, the experience of most individuals may be catastrophic. By focusing on the compound average growth rate, we can see the median realizations which account for risk are often more crucial decision points than ensemble averages, which are the focal point of Monte Carlo analysis. These arguments also provide a simple
  • Factor Portfolios: Turnover Analysis [Factor Research]

    Some ETF investors claim that passive index products are superior to actively managed funds due to lower turnover and therefore less transaction costs. While this is partially true, most investors are unlikely to be familiar that indices such as the S&P 500 have a relatively high amount of turnover. The average tenure in the S&P 500 has decreased from 33 years in 1964 to 24 years in 2016,
  • When Bullish Opex Weeks Fail To Play Out [Quantifiable Edges]

    I discussed last weekend that monthly option expiration (opex) week is typically a bullish week, especially during the months of March, April, October, and December. Obviously, the bullish tendency did not play out this past week. So does this mean the bullish tendency may be delayed a week? Or is the market not doing what it is supposed to a sign that it is likely to continue lower? Or

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/18/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Sunday, 03/18/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Interest rate swap returns: empirical lessons [SR SV]

    Interest rate swaps trade duration risk across developed and emerging markets. Since 2000 fixed rate receivers have posted positive returns in 26 of 27 markets. Returns have been positively correlated across virtually all countries, even though low yield swaps correlated negatively with global equities and high-yield swaps positively. IRS returns have posted fat tails in all markets, i.e. a

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/17/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Saturday, 03/17/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Does indexing threaten the market? [Mathematical Investor]

    Index investing has grown significantly over the past 30 years. Back in 1990, few were even aware of the option for indexing, and options were limited mostly to a handful of conventional mutual funds tracking the U.S. S&P 500 index. In 1993, Bostons State Street Global Advisors launched the first S&P 500 index-tracking exchanged traded fund (ETF), with ticker SPY. Today this ETF

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/15/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Thursday, 03/15/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Is The US Stock Market Overvalued? Depends on which Model You Ask [Alpha Architect]

    When stock prices reach a new high, investors start asking the question: Are stocks overvalued? To answer this question, investors have developed several alternative equity valuation models. Typically, each of this models compares the stock markets current price level to a benchmark. Among practitioners, two of the leading equity valuation models are the Shiller CAPE model and the so-called Fed
  • Volume and Volatility: A Tale of Two Vols [Quant Fiction]

    Outside of price action, two of the most popular market characteristics analyzed are volume and volatility. Volatility is often used to determine market regime, while the traditional use for volume is to confirm price movement. This post will investigate the relationship between these two characteristics, and whether using both of them may be redundant. First Look To investigate the effects of the

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/14/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Wednesday, 03/14/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Do Relative-Value Strategies Beat Traditional Systematic Value Investing Strategies? [Alpha Architect]

    Readers often send us great questions related to different ideas on systematic value strategies. The outcome of years of back and forth with readers and internal discussions is several books and hundreds of blog posts on the subject of value investing. SoWhat have we learned? Weve learned a lot, but despite our best research efforts we havent changed our core systmeatic value model. We
  • Demystifying the Hurst Exponent with Cryptocurrencies [Quant Dare]

    Is the bitcoin market (Ethereum, Dash and Litecoin) efficient? After reading the paper, Persistence in the cryptocurrency market, which tries to answer that question, I was challenged by a colleague to replicate its results. This led me to write this post to highlight the great variability of the Hurst exponent estimation, not only between implementations but between series, and how risky it
  • Profiling Correlations For The Major Asset Classes [Capital Spectator]

    The case for holding a portfolio thats diversified across markets and asset classes is built on the assumption that return correlations will remain below 1.0 (perfect positive correlation) by more than a trivial degree. To the extent that you own assets that move independently of one another youll reap the rewards of diversification, which is widely celebrated as the only true free lunch in
  • Is Equity Pairs Trading Profitable Due to Cointegration? [Quantpedia]

    We study the theoretical implications of cointegrated stock prices on the profitability of pairs trading strategies. If stock returns are fairly weakly correlated across time, cointegration implies very high Sharpe ratios. To the extent that the theoretical Sharpe ratios are "too large," this suggests that either (i) cointegration does not exist pairwise among stocks, and pairs trading

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/13/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Tuesday, 03/13/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • News Buzz Impacts Stock Returns [Raven Pack]

    To bridge the gap between the quantitative community and discretionary investors, RavenPack launched the latest edition of its self-service data and visualization platform back in Fall 2017 – making it easier to create custom daily indicators on top of RavenPacks granular data. Indicators which can be used as signals to inform trading decisions. As part of our most recent research, we presented
  • Three Trading “Truths” Quantified [Build Alpha]

    I want to discuss three trading truths that I often heard but when I finally got into testing ideas found them to be myths. These discoveries were instrumental in turning my trading around. For those that know my story, it was not all roses and rainbows what trading story is?!? I actually learned like a lot of traders from online sources, chat rooms, webinars, and eventually found
  • Newfound’s 2018 March Madness Bracket Challenge [Flirting with Models]

    Bracket templates can be downloaded here. Bracket submissions must be sent here with a subject of "March Madness 2018" by 11:59PM Eastern time on Wednesday March 14, 2018. On the heels of ReSolves past four years of progressive March Madness bracket challenges, we are pleased to take over the reins for the 2018 go-around, and we invite you to participate. Weve learned a lot over

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/12/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Monday, 03/12/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Tactical Asset Allocation and Taxes [Allocate Smartly]

    Tactical asset allocation, by its nature, generates more transactions than buy & hold. Investors trading in taxable accounts would be justifiably concerned that the negative tax consequences of that might outweigh the benefits of TAA by shifting returns to less advantageous short-term capital gains. Our newest member feature responds to those concerns. We track more than 40 TAA strategies in
  • Worried about extreme down markets? Consider formal portfolio risk models [Alpha Architect]

    Are there variations in the methods that funds use to manage risk? Do hedge funds practicing risk management outperform other funds during periods of financial crisis? Are there differences in the type of risk management practices in terms of performance? Are there competing explanations that may also explain the outperformance of risk-managed hedge funds? What are the Academic Insights? YES. The
  • March Madness for Investors [Flirting with Models]

    Over the past few years, ReSolve Asset Management has progressively worked to develop new and exciting rules for the March Madness bracket tournament. While the stakes may be much lower than in investing, many of the lessons we have learned translate well to portfolio construction and strategy development. Knowing the rules, diversifying appropriately, developing robust models, making wise
  • Algorithmic trading is here to stay [R Trader]

    A foreword for the regular reader: this article has nothing to do with R With the increase of market electronification, algorithmic trading is becoming more and more popular. As a result, the regulator has paid a particular attention to this activity in the MIFID II regulation, designing a brand new set of rules. Market participants are now operating within a more rigorous and stringent
  • Equity Factors and GDP Growth [Factor Research]

    Economic cycles have a clear impact on factor performance Some factors show pro-cyclical while others highlight anti-cyclical characteristics Given that real GDP is not published in real-time, it is unlikely effective for factor selection INTRODUCTION Financial commentators frequently explain a rising stock market by the strength of the economy, which is rather intuitive. If the economy grows,
  • Today s Employment-Sparked NASDAQ Rally Appears To Be A Short-Term Bullish Indication [Quantifiable Edges]

    The employment report has helped to spark a big rally today, and the NASDAQ is hitting new all-time highs. I looked back at other instances where the NASDAQ spiked higher and closed at a new high on the day of an employment report. The results I saw were compelling. Here are the list of instances along with their 5-day returns: 2018-03-10 With the only loser closing down 0.06%, the stats are

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/06/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Tuesday, 03/06/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Thinking in Long/Short Portfolios [Flirting with Models]

    Few investors hold explicit shorts in their portfolio, but all active investors hold them We (re-)introduce the simple framework of thinking about an active portfolio as a combination of a passive benchmark plus a long/short portfolio. This decomposition provides greater clarity into the often confusing role of terms like active bets, active share, and active risk. We see that while active share
  • Macroeconomic factors and Tactical Asset Allocation [Alpha Architect]

    The literature shows that macroeconomic factors can drive asset returns, however, economists and investment teams operate independently. In this paper, the authors attempt to bring macroeconomic discipline to tactical asset allocation by highlighting macroeconomic dashboards: The authors suggest that a macroeconomic dashboard try and answer the following question: If an investor has a one
  • Cryptocurrencies with Python eBook: Apr 15 [Quant At Risk]

    It is my pleasure to deliver a long-awaited QaR ebook on the introduction to blockchain and cryptocurrencies with Python on April 15, 2018. In the book we will cover inter alia the fundamental aspects of blockchain in general; the craze around cryptocoins like Bitcoin, Ether, LiteCoin, etc.; their time-series analysis and statistical modeling using Python; key aspects of cryptocurrency risk

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/05/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Monday, 03/05/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Testing the Efficiente Index [Allocate Smartly]

    This test is based on the Efficiente Index from JP Morgan. A variation of this strategy is available via the ETF EFFE. The strategy uses traditional mean-variance optimization (aka the Efficient Frontier) to trade a broad basket of asset classes, but its actually a momentum strategy in disguise. The strategy hasnt generated huge returns, but it has had success managing losses, reducing
  • Dividend Yield Combinations [Factor Research]

    According to MorningStar assets under management of smart beta products breached $1 trillion in 2017 and more than half of the assets were invested in just three factors: Value, Growth and Dividend Yield. Naturally there is a significant amount of empirical evidence that suggests Value stocks generate positive excess returns across time, but much less evidence for the latter two factors. We

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 03/03/2018

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Saturday, 03/03/2018. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • The New Short Volatility Instrument Landscape [QuantStrat TradeR]

    This post will discuss the consequences of ProShares decision to change the investment objective of SVXY, and possible alternatives that various investors can use to try and create an identical exposure if their strategy calls for such an instrument. So, to begin with, Proshares recently decided to make SVXY
  • Hidden Markov Modelling of Synthetic Periodic Time Series Data [Dekalog Blog]

    I am currently working on a method of predicting/projecting cyclic price action, based upon John Ehlers' sinewave indicator code, and to test it I am using Octave's implementation of a Hidden Markov model in the Octave statistics package hosted at Sourceforge. Basically I measure the dominant cycle period ( using either the above linked sinewave indicator code or autocorrelation
  • SPX Performance After Three 1% Down Days [Quantifiable Edges]

    Last night I looked at 3-day pullbacks a number of ways in relation to current market conditions. I thought blog readers might find the following interesting. I noted that SPX closed lower by greater than 1% for the 3rd day in a row on Thursday. In the past, that has often been followed by gains the next day. But times where is wasntwell, take a look at the chart below.