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