equity long short - QuantPedia

Settling the Size Matter

September 17, 2020

Equity factors are not as straightforward as they may seem to be. There is an ongoing debate about their usability or expected return since they have a cyclical nature. Moreover, the modern trend of smart beta only fuels this debate. Novel research by Blitz and Hanauer examines the size factor and sheds some light on this elusive anomaly. The size seems to be weak as a stand-alone factor, but it’s far from useless. The academic paper suggests that the size factor can be an important addition to the other equity factors as it helps to unlock the full potential of the quality, value or momentum factors.

Authors: Blitz, David and Hanauer, Matthias Xaver

Title: Settling the Size Matter

The Positive Similarity of Company Filings and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

September 10, 2020

The usage of alternative data is now a main-stream topic in investment management and algorithmic trading. So let’s together explore the textual analysis of 10-K & 10-Q filings and analyze how these datasets could be used as a profitable part of investment portfolios. We invite you to read this short summarization of the research. Full version can be found on the SSRN.

Pre-Announcement Returns

August 26, 2020

Earnings announcement days are really important dates in a usual yearly corporate routine. The stock market usually reacts sharply on earnings announcement news and stocks on average earn statistically significant return excess of the market over the short window centred around the announcements. But how does the movement of stocks look before earnings announcement? The recent research paper written by Gao, Hu, and Zhang analyzes price action before and after earnings announcement and shows that a majority of the announcement month premium is realized during the pre-announcement period. Stocks with higher levels of uncertainty (stocks are sorted based on their option implied volatilities) experience larger pre-announcement returns and more uncertainty resolution during the pre-announcement period…

Authors: Gao, Chao and Hu, Grace Xing and Zhang, Xiaoyan.

Title: Uncertainty Resolution Before Earnings Announcements

Implied Equity Duration as a Measure of Pandemic Shutdown Risk

August 14, 2020

Some companies have relatively more of their value in near-term cash flow (for ex. General Motors Corporation). Others (for ex. Tesla), are growth stocks, with a greater proportion of their market value based on long-term expected future cash flow. It seems that coronavirus pandemic has hit mainly the first group, the “low equity duration” companies. A new academic research paper written by Dechow, Erhard, Sloan, and Soliman explains how the equity duration factor can be used to assess how are companies exposed to short-term unexpected macroeconomic events (like COVID-19 pandemic), and how equity duration sensitivity can also explain relative underperformance of value vs growth stocks during the last bear market.

Authors: Dechow, Patricia and Erhard, Ryan and Sloan, Richard G. and Soliman, Mark T.

Title: Implied Equity Duration: A Measure of Pandemic Shutdown Risk

The Effectivity of Selected Crisis Hedge Strategies

July 30, 2020

During past months we made a set of articles analyzing the performance of equity factors and selected systematic strategies during coronavirus crisis. These articles were short-ranged with data only from the start of the year 2020, which is enough for the purpose of the quick blog posts, but very short-sighted to see the nature of these strategies. Therefore, we expanded the time range by 20 years. For a better understanding of hedge possibilities of these strategies, we have added a comparison to essential safe-haven assets, not only to equities.

ESG Scores and Price Momentum Are More Than Compatible

July 16, 2020

What will happen if we mix ESG scoring with price momentum? Can we improve simple ESG investing strategy?

The pure price momentum can be combined with ESG scores using a Knapsack algorithm. Knapsack algorithm is a well-known mathematical problem of optimization, and in the case of momentum and ESG, can be used to make the momentum portfolios significantly more responsible, with lower volatility and better risk-adjusted return. The second option is to make the ESG portfolio substantially more profitable by using Knapsack algorithm to construct high ESG portfolio with large momentum. The approach resulted in a strategy with high ESG score and compared to pure momentum or momentum-ESG strategy, with significantly reduced volatility. Therefore, the ESG-momentum strategy has the best risk-adjusted return, the lowest drawdown, the lowest volatility and the most consistent returns.

The Risk in Equity Risk Factors

July 9, 2020

The bear markets were and surely would be present in the equities in the future. While many fear them, experienced investors accept that the growth of the equity market cannot be constant and that inherent equity risk often manifests as a painful market drawdown. When someone designs a strategy, it is a general practice to check its performance during such downturns. Therefore, we can recommend an interesting novel research paper by Paul Geertsema and Helen Lu. The selected paper analyzes the risk of the most common equity factors and plots their over- or under-performance during multiple crisis periods since the Vietnam war until the COVID-19.

Authors: Paul Geertsema, Helen Lu

Title: The Risk in Risk Factors

Long-Short vs Long-Only Implementation of Equity Factors

May 26, 2020

How should be equity factor strategies implemented? In a long-only smart beta) way? As a long-short strategy, as most of the hedge funds usually do? Or in a partially-hedged fashion by going long equity factor and shorting market to offset some of the market risks? There is no one universal answer as it depends on the investment mandate and constraints of each fund manager contemplating to implement factor investing strategies. But recent academic paper written by Benaych-Georges, Bouchaud and Ciliberti suggests that it’s a good idea to go in the direction of long-short implementation (if it’s possible). Managing short book can be challenging; however, the added benefit of lower correlation among strategies gives resultant factor portfolio a significant boost in the return-to-risk ratio (even after accounting for realistic implementation and shorting costs).

Authors: Benaych-Georges, Bouchaud, Ciliberti

Title: Equity Factors: To Short Or Not To Short, That is the Question

YTD Performance of Equity Factors – Update After Two Months

May 15, 2020

Nearly two months ago, in a time of the highest turmoil during the current pandemic crisis, we performed a quick assessment of the status of performance of equity factor strategies. The world has still not been able to ward-off health-care crisis completely, but a lot of countries have made significant progress (on the other hand, there are still a lot of countries in a worse state than a few months ago). Equity indexes have rebounded from the March lows and have removed some of the losses. Therefore, we have received multiple inquiries about the current situation of equity factor strategies.

So it may be a good time to revisit once again how they are performing.

Backtesting ESG Factor Investing Strategies

May 7, 2020

Socially Responsible Investing (also called ESG Factor Investing) grows in popularity. More and more investors enter the stock market not just to invest their savings, but they are also want to support companies that bring positive social or environmental change. ESG factor investing can bring satisfaction to those investors. But does it also brings a real outperformance in a financial sense? Is there some ESG factor alpha? How big is it? These are some of the questions we have decided to investigate – we obtained data, identified ESG factor strategies and tested them. Feel free to explore them with us…