Research and Insights
Insights
Fading The Consensus by Taking the Opposite Side of Jim Cramer’s Picks
In our opinion, long time investors and traders know that the consensus is usually wrong,...
Traditional Investment Approaches are Ok (If You Are Ok with Just Doing Ok)
I have been posting and tweeting a lot about the dangers of traditional set-and-forget investment...
It’s Not “Either/Or”, It’s Both
Which is better: fundamental or technical analysis? This is a years-old debate, one that will...
The Rise and Fall of the Retail Trading Revolution: Can a New, Smarter Approach Emerge?
I recently saw this headline on Bloomberg.com: The Cult of the Retail Trader Has Fizzled "The...
White Papers
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Retail Investor Sentiment Data in Investment Decisions
Date: November 2021
In business school we learned that stocks go up for one of two reasons: they are either undervalued, or they are expected to grow. Now there is a third reason: social media interest. This may not be surprising to retail investors already aware of what can happen when a social media post triggers a mass move to buy or sell a stock, but it appears Wall Street is finally beginning to pay attention to stocks that are popular with retail investors.
Pre-Merger SPACs: A Replacement for M&A Arbitrage Funds
Date: August 13, 2021
Financial advisors will often look to diversify a portfolio through funds and ETFs that do not correlate with the rest of a client’s portfolio. One alternative asset class they may pursue is an event driven strategy, merger and acquisition (M&A) arbitrage. However, this paper serves to demonstrate how a well-managed grouping of pre-merger Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle (SPAC) shares could replace and improve on M&A arbitrage funds as a part of a portfolio through pre-merger SPACs’ risk and potential reward characteristics.
Thematic Investing
Date: May 07, 2021
Thematic ETFs have been some of the most popular types of ETFs to launch in the past couple of years. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that these ETFs have the potential to outperform traditional market indices (and have done so by leaps and bounds on a backtested basis) and, from an optics perspective, they are just more interesting. However, in most cases, higher returns also mean higher risk, so there are a number of pitfalls investors need to be aware of: indexing, rebalance frequency, overweighting, and volatility drag.
Tail Risk Hedging
Date: April 02, 2021
Bull markets are great. When the market is going up, people are making money, and emotions generally run positive. Unfortunately, markets can’t go up forever. If they did, the Forbes 400 would be the Forbes 400,000. Sometimes markets get a bit ahead of themselves and need to pause before they can begin to move up again. Other times they plummet, usually in response to something drastic like the real estate bubble bursting in 2008 or COVID-19 in 2020.