The standard definition of “deflation” is “a fall in prices.” A common assumption among investors is that deflation is bad for real economic growth and, therefore by extension, also for real dividend growth. However, that may not necessarily be the case. For example, deflation can be separated into good deflation, which typically follows a positive…
One of the most common arguments I hear against passive investing (which we can define as the use of a systematic approach to gain exposure to a factor or factors) goes like this: How can good management that is “thinking” not be superior to “nonthinking” management? I have found most investors harbor a strong opinion…
Jim Lange is the author of “Retire Secure,” a book I would highly recommend. While the book doesn’t address investment strategies (asset allocation) or the question of a safe withdrawal rate, it does cover a wide variety of important financial issues. Lange, a CPA and an attorney, shows investors how the right decisions increase the…
In a recent article, I discussed the findings from a study by Brad Barber, Xing Huang and Terrance Odean, “Which Factors Matter to Investors? Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows,” which appeared in the October 2016 issue of The Review of Financial Studies. In their paper, the authors investigated whether investors tend to consider common equity…
One of the risks investors should consider is how their human (or labor) capital correlates with equity risks. Given the risk of correlation, it is logical to conclude that human capital could have explanatory power when it comes to stock returns. Sean Campbell, Stefanos Delikouras, Danling Jiang and George Korniotis contribute to the literature on…
Behavioral finance is the study of human behavior and how that behavior leads to investment errors—including the mispricing of assets. I find it to be the most interesting area of financial research, as it provides us with important insights we can use to improve investor behavior and produce better investment results. If investors are made…
As a general rule of thumb, the more complexity that exists in a Wall Street creation, the faster and farther investors should run. – David Swensen, “Unconventional Success” One of the most well-known and most beloved forms of literature is the fairy tale. Although not every fairy tale is actually about fairies, they do tend…
The introduction to the new book I co-authored with Andrew Berkin, “Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing,” begins: “If a poll was taken asking investors to name the greatest investor of all time, it is safe to say that the vast majority would likely respond, ‘Warren Buffett.’ Thus, we could say that a major goal…
As a general rule of thumb, the more complexity that exists in a Wall Street creation, the faster and farther investors should run. – David Swensen, “Unconventional Success” Earlier this week, I unpacked a recent study from the U.K. that concluded investors’ behavioral biases, combined with features of structured products that can exploit these biases,…
Last week, we examined the data (from my new book, “Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing,” which I co-authored with Andrew Berkin) on the odds that the premiums associated with some common investment factors would produce a negative return over various horizons. We then examined how constructing a diversified factor portfolio might impact those odds…
The results of the U.S. presidential election not only surprised almost all the gurus who were saying that a Hillary Clinton victory was a sure thing, but also those forecasting that, if by some miracle Donald Trump won, a stock market crash was bound to occur. Prior to the election, I had received many inquiries…
As I have been discussing in a series of articles (which you can find here, here and here), we now have a substantial body of evidence demonstrating that individual investors possess a preference for low-priced equities. This is anomalous behavior, because the level of a company’s stock price is arbitrary—firms can manipulate it by adjusting…
Eugene Fama and Kenneth French’s seminal 1992 paper, “The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns,” resulted in the development of the Fama-French three-factor model. This model added the size and value factors to the market beta factor. One of the benefits of adding the value factor (the tendency for relatively cheap assets to outperform relatively expensive…
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. This is a big problem for the efficient markets hypothesis, as there’s no coherent risk-based explanation for momentum’s performance. Not only has there…
The table below, taken from the newly released book I co-authored with Andrew Berkin, “Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing,” shows the annual premium and Sharpe ratio for the equity factors of market beta, size, value, momentum, profitability and quality. It also shows the odds that each premium will produce a negative return over various…
