Lessons from long-term global equity performance
A truly global and long-term (116 years) data set for both successful and failed financial markets shows that equity has delivered positive long-term performance...
Classifying market regimes
Market regimes are clusters of persistent market conditions. They affect the relevance of investment factors and the success of trading strategies. The practical challenge...
Estimating the positioning of trend followers
There is a simple method of approximating trend follower positioning in real-time and without lag. It is based on normalized returns in liquid futures...
Crowded trades: measure and effect
One measure of the crowdedness of trades in a portfolio is centrality. Centrality is a concept of network analysis that measures how similar one...
The downside variance risk premium
The variance risk premium of an asset is the difference between options-implied and actual expected return variation. It can be viewed as a price...
Identifying asset price bubbles
A new paper proposes a practical method for identifying asset price bubbles. First, one estimates deviations of prices from fundamentals based on three different...
Fake alpha
Statistical alpha can be divided into fake alpha, which is a premium for non-directional systematic risk, and true alpha, which reflects the quality of the...
A theory of hedge fund runs
Hedge funds’ capital structure is vulnerable to market shocks because most of them offer high liquidity to loss-sensitive investors. Moreover, hedge fund managers form...
External imbalances and FX returns
Hedge ratios of international investment positions have increased over past decades, spurred by regulation and expanding derivative markets. This has given rise to predictable...
FX carry trade crashes
A global historical analysis of FX carry trades shows positive long-term performance but a negative skew of returns. Large drawdowns have been associated with...