From 2010 to 2017, quant managers generally did a better job than fundamental managers at beating their benchmarks, according to Nomura (see graph below). However, in the last couple of years, quant strategies have been underperforming and experiencing a two-year-long so called “quant winter.” There are various reasons for the underperformance. Most notably, the correlations … Read more

Some of the best-known investors of the last century have been value oriented. Benjamin Graham, Joel Greenblatt, and Warren Buffet have each emphasized investing in companies that trade at a low price relative to the value of their assets or steadiness of earnings. Despite this fact, the value play has been suffering ever since the … Read more

Following the stunning first-quarter sell-off (see Figure 1 below), both the Federal Reserve and Congress took unprecedented actions to mitigate the economic impact of the Coronavirus. The Fed originally cut 50bps off their target rate in a March 3rd emergency meeting, but slashed another 100bps—all the way to zero—just twelve days later. They also tremendously … Read more

The so-called “size premium”, which says that the growth potential in small cap companies compensates for their increased risk, has a long-standing historical precedence. In Dr. Kenneth French’s research on factor investing, he showed that the bottom quintile of stocks in terms of market cap have returned 11.7% annually since July 1926, while the top … Read more

From tweets to trade wars to impeachment inquiries, 2019 has been anything but steady. The one thing that has weathered the storm? The U.S. equity market, which is up almost 25% YTD. Despite this strong performance, there is an increasing concern among investors that equity prices may be out of line with corporate fundamentals. Although … Read more

Almost two years ago, we wrote a piece on the decades-long trend of passive investing and its impacts on the market. The thoughts expressed in the article are still relevant today as Michael Burry, a prominent subject in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, recently labeled the trend in passive investing a bubble. In his interview … Read more