In the previous post, we looked at some statistical properties of the empirical distributions of spot SPX and VIX. In this post, we are going to investigate the mean reverting and trending properties of these indices. To do so, we are going to calculate their Hurst exponents. There exist a variety

So many research papers, so little time. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? You might start with the following five economic and financial papers that appeared in The Capital Spectator’s Research Review column in 2017. In a sea of newly minted studies over the past 12 months, these

Conventional wisdom can be defined as ideas that are so accepted that they go unquestioned. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom is often wrong. Two great examples are that millions of people once believed the conventional wisdom that the Earth is flat, and millions also believed that the Earth is the

This paper examines persistence in the cryptocurrency market. Two different longmemory methods (R/S analysis and fractional integration) are used to analyse it in the case of the four main cryptocurrencies (BitCoin, LiteCoin, Ripple, Dash) over the sample period 2013-2017. The findings indicate that

Since December, bitcoins can not only be traded at more or less dubious exchanges, but also as futures at the CME and CBOE. And already several trading systems popped up for bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. None of them can claim big success, with one exception. There is a strategy that easily

What are the research questions? Given the prevalence of buybacks as a form of corporate payouts, should they be explicitly included in supply-side models such as the dividend discount model (DDM) used to forecast of stock returns? Does the same superior performance extend to the prediction of

Yesterday I decided to examine performance of XIV during the last few days of the year. The thought was that we are now in a time period that is generally regarded as seasonally bullish. Additionally, volume and volatility are often light this week with many traders on vacation. So I thought with

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. (Benjamin Franklin) December 2017. Reading Time: Several hours. Author: FactorResearch. SUMMARY Contains 34 research papers that we published on FactorResearch.com in 2017 Focus on factor investing and quantitative strategies from an investor’s

Well here we are, another year gone (and so fast too!). I’m glad you could join me for this final episode for 2017, where we’ll be reviewing all of the special guests we had on the show this year, the topics and insights they’ve shared plus their top trading lessons. I think this is a great

During a time of year that is renowned for its low volatility and bullish seasonality, one might think XIV would have some strong historical returns. Well… 2017-12-25 …one would be wrong. Happy Holidays anyway!

Put that machine learning tutorial down. Machine learning is for closers only. As some of you that were around back in the early of this blog may know, I always held high hopes for the application of machine learning (ml) to generate trading edges. I think like many people first coming across

Strategy: core directional choices that best best moves you into your desired future Tactics: specific actions that will best implement your strategies Without a core strategy to anchor all tactics suggestions to see which best FIT (feasible, impactful, timely) the strategy, one could randomly

There has been much discussion of the small-cap premium recently. Has its popularity cannibalized its utility? Are large firms preventing a level playing field? Will the small-cap premium exist going forward? This article does not address these concerns directly, but it does identify and analyze

This post will be about investigating the efficacy of contango as a volatility trading signal. For those that trade volatility (like me), a term you may see that’s somewhat ubiquitous is the term “contango”. What does this term mean? Well, simple: it just means the ratio of the second month of

The academic research has generally found valuations, such as the earnings yield (E/P) (or the CAPE 10 earnings yield) and valuation spreads, have predictive value in terms of future returns. The higher the earnings yield, the higher the expected return, and the larger the spread in valuations

Carry trade returns vary across fixed and floating currency regimes. Over the last century, outsized carry returns occur exclusively in the floating regime, being zero in the fixed regime. The absence of skewness in floating carry returns rules out a skewness-based explanation for this result.

Is it possible to foresee the future movements of a stock? Let’s use Machine Learning techniques to predict the direction of one of the most important stock indexes, the S&P 500. Pregaming The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P500) is a stock market index based on the capitalization of the

Trend-following is something I’ve struggled with for years — always felt like voodoo magic and data-mining. That said, I finally came around to appreciating the practice after a ton of research replication efforts, independent research. At the time I was investigating the topic there really

Are cryptocurrencies potentially useful portfolio diversifiers? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Exploring the Dynamic Relationships between Cryptocurrencies and Other Financial Assets”, Shaen Corbet, Andrew Meegan, Charles Larkin, Brian Lucey and Larisa Yarovaya apply a battery of tests

Pairs trading is a nice example of a strategy based on mathematical analysis. We’ll demonstrate how to leverage data to create and automate a pairs trading strategy. Underlying Principle Let’s say you have a pair of securities X and Y that have some underlying economic link, for example two

Does the industry concentration exhibited in short sellers’ holdings convey new material information about the industry? Are the excess returns obtained from industry shorting combined with firm-specific shorting strategies explained by risk? Is the industry shorting signal correlated with

Traditional value strategies simply sort the investment universe based on one or more valuation metrics (e.g. book-to-market, price-to-earnings, etc.) and purchase the securities that look the cheapest. However, this process is often prone to structural sector bets, which are uncompensated sources

Value & Size generate abnormally large positive returns in January, Momentum negative returns Abnormal returns are limited to the last week of December and first week of January Difficult to harvest these returns efficiently due to illiquidity of markets at these times INTRODUCTION At this time

In this blog, we will step by step implement a machine learning classification algorithm on S&P500 using Support Vector Classifier (SVC). SVCs are supervised learning classification models. A set of training data is provided to the machine learning classification algorithm, each belonging to one

Andreas Koukorinis lives in London and in 2013 he co-founded Stratagem Technologies—a tech startup using AI and machine learning to trade sports as a financial product. These sports predominately include; football, tennis and basketball. But for Andreas, his roots are in trading instruments and

Asian options are path-dependent options whose payoff depends on the average value of the underlying asset during a specific set of dates across the life of the option. Because the payoff of the Asian options depends on the average value of the underlying asset, volatility in the average value is

The US stock market has been on a tear lately. Has the party gone too far? A rising chorus of analysts say that caution is advised, citing several valuation metrics. The Shiller PE Ratio, for instance, is currently at its second-highest level since the late-1800s. Valuations appear stretched, but

Here is a link to our recent podcast on Behind the Uniform. I’m so humbled and honored to have Wesley Gray on the show today, talking about his experience building Alpha Architect. I found Wes through a Wall Street Journal article that starts with: “Wesley Gray’s value-focused fund of overseas

You should have a plan for when you screw things up because I can guarantee it will happen. This is the screw up I did last night and how I handled it this morning. Enjoy this unplanned post. The Nightly Ritual Each night for 250 days of the year, I do the following for my trading. Step 1: In the

In this mini series on Time Series modelling for Financial Data, so far we’ve used AR, MA and a combination of these models on asset prices to try and model how our asset behaves. We’ve found that we were able to model certain time periods well with these models and failed at other times. This

Clustering has already been discussed in plenty of detail, but today I would like to focus on a relatively simple but extremely modular clustering technique, hierarchical clustering, and how it could be applied to ETFs. We’ll also be able to review the python tools available to help us with this.

In the last article, we looked at correlations between Iron Condor returns and Iron Condor structures / trade management. Specifically, we started with the following list of areas to investigate: Correlation between Iron Condor strategy structure / management and result metrics Which result metrics

“Big data” is already a frequently-heard buzzword, both in the business analytics arena, but also in the field of high-performance scientific computing. Basically, “big data” encompasses the collection, processing, indexing and utilization of large-scale datasets. Some concrete examples

Finding quotes and historical data for Bitcoin and Bitcoin futures can be an adventure. Below I’ve assembled links to the online resources that I’ve been able to find. In many cases, data is available from multiple sources. I did not attempt to list all of them. BTC Quotes Yahoo Finance

This paper studies the relation between global foreign exchange (FX) return dispersion risk and the cross-section of currency momentum returns. We find robust empirical evidence that FX return dispersion is a priced risk factor and that it contains information beyond traditional factors. Currencies

What are the research questions? What are the general circumstances associated with independent director departures? Is it possible to identify situations whereby the departure is unexpected and not due to retirements, director outside commitments or firings by the firm? Are the unexpected or

Most institutions are forecasting lower expected returns for traditional asset classes compared to historical realized levels. Rules based upon historically realized numbers – like the 4% withdrawal rule – may fail going forward. Should we simply accept lower withdrawal rates in our financial

Mean-Reversion on index level became profitable post the 1970s, before that Momentum dominated The structural shift from Momentum to Mean-Reversion is consistent across markets Likely explained by the evolution of financial markets INTRODUCTION Investors and traders basically only have two options

Over several time horizons op-ex week in December has been the most bullish week of the year for the SPX. The positive seasonality actually has persisted for up to 3 weeks. I’ve shown the study below in the blog many times since 2008. It looks back to 1984, which was the first year that SPX

Part of my normal routine is to indulge in online research for use useful ideas, and I recently came across An Empirical Evaluation of Similarity Measures for Time Series Classification, and one standout from this paper is the Time Warp Edit Distance where, from the conclusion, "...the TWED

Momentum is the tendency for assets that have performed well (poorly) in the recent past to continue to perform well (poorly) in the future, at least for a short period of time. Initial research on momentum was published by Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman, authors of the 1993 study,

Implementing Momentum: What Have We Learned? Adrienne Ross (AQR Capital Management), et al. December 2017 An abundance of academic evidence and theory exists on the efficacy and intuition behind momentum investing, yet a limited number of studies discuss the feasibility of running momentum

November 2017 Trend Following: DOWN -0.61% / YTD: -15.45% Please find below the latest edition of the Wisdom State of Trend Following as of last month. Performance is hypothetical. Chart for November: Wisdom State of Trend Following - November 2017 And the 12-month chart: Wisdom State of Trend

November was down for the index, sitting just below the negative double-digit line before year-end. It looks like the State of TF will end in the red in 2017, unless a strong bitcoin-inspired December rally lifts the index back in the black. Please check below for more details. Detailed Results The

In the previous posts in this series, we combined the Autoregressive models and Moving Average models to produce Auto Regressive Moving Average(ARMA) models. We found that we were still unable to fully explain autocorrelation or obtain residuals that are discrete white noise. Let’s further extend

In the previous posts in this series, we talked about Auto-Regressive Models and Moving Average Models and found that both these models only partially explained the log-returns of stock prices. We now combine the Autoregressive models and Moving Average models to produce more sophisticated

Determining the correct parameter values to be used in a Jump-Diffusion model is not a trivial process (as outlined here). In this blog post we will be using the biologically inspired differential evolution technique to calibrate a Jump-Diffusion model using simulated share price data. The Jump

Xiao Qiao is a research analyst for a Connecticut-based hedge fund, focused on trading commodity futures. He graduated with a PhD in Finance—and was a teaching assistant to renown economist Eugene Fama. Notably, Xiao has also worked directly with trading legend Blair Hull on two quantitative

A common question I get is where do I find all my research ideas. My main source is Quantocracy. He does a great job of curating posts because the work is manually done. Then there the Better System Trader and Trend Following Radio podcasts. Usually from these sources I get a nugget of an idea to

What an investors pays for an asset directly impacts the forward return an investor is likely to receive. The question for any investor given today’s high stock multiples AND low bond yields globally is how much this matters not only over an intermediate time frame, but over a period potentially