All-Americans: The Best Picks? [PREMIUM]
Do stock analysts elected to All-American (AA) status by institutional voters (via Institutional Investor magazine) reliably out-pick other analysts? In the December 2011 update of their paper entitled “Are Stars’ Opinions Worth More? The R...
University Endowment Performance: Strategic versus Tactical Allocation [PREMIUM]
Is strategic asset class allocation or active management paramount for U.S. university endowment investment performance? In the October 2011 draft of their paper entitled “Do (Some) University Endowments Earn Alpha?”, Brad Barber and Guojun...
SumZero Participant Trading Acumen [PREMIUM]
Do analysts who work for hedge funds make good calls? In their November 2011 paper entitled “Do Buy-side Recommendations Have Investment Value?”, Steven Crawford, Wesley Gray, Bryan Johnson and Richard Price III profile analysts employed b...
Impact of Free, Unbiased Investing Advice
How do individual investors respond to an offer of free, unbiased investment advice? In their August 2010 paper entitled “Is Unbiased Financial Advice To Retail Investors Sufficient? Answers from a Large Field Study”, Utpal Bhattacharya, An...
Should the “Anxious Index” Make Investors Anxious?
Since 1990, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has conducted a quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters. The American Statistical Association and the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted the survey from 1968-1989. Among other things...
Does Accurate Forecasting Get Attention?
Do individual experts whose U.S. stock market forecasting records are good (bad) gain (lose) attention? The “pro” argument is that investors (and online intermediaries) eventually flock to good forecasters and ignore bad ones in search of a...
Survey of Research on Equity Analysts [PREMIUM]
There is a decades-long stream of academic research on equity analysts as sophisticated users of financial data, focusing on the usefulness of sell-side analyst earnings forecasts and stock recommendations. What is the gist of this stream? In his June ...
Survey of Research on Equity Analysts [PREMIUM]
There is a decades-long stream of academic research on equity analysts as sophisticated users of financial data, focusing on the usefulness of sell-side analyst earnings forecasts and stock recommendations. What is the gist of this stream? In his June ...
Active ETF Performance [PREMIUM]
Do active exchange-traded funds (ETF), which realistically incorporate management costs and trading frictions, offer value to investors? In his June 2011 paper entitled “Active ETFs and Their Performance vis-à-vis Passive ETFs, Mutual Funds and ...
A Few Notes on The Most Important Thing
Howard Marks introduces his 2011 book, The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, by stating: “…I have built this book around the idea of the most important things–each is a brick in what I hope will be a so...
Investment Managers and Market Timing
Do professional money managers as a group successfully time the stock market? The National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) is an association of registered investment advisors who provide active money management services to their clien...
CFOs Still the Best Inside Traders? [PREMIUM]
“CFOs vs. CEOs as Inside Traders” describes research finding that, based on data through July 2002 before Sarbanes-Oxley Act implementation, investors should focus on Chief Financial Officers (CFO) as better inside traders than Chief Execut...
