own-research - QuantPedia

Insights from the Geopolitical Sentiment Index made with Google Trends

September 3, 2024

Throughout history, geopolitical stress and tension has been ever-present. From ancient civilizations to today’s world, global dynamics have been largely shaped by wars, terrorism, and trade disputes. Financial markets, as always, have keenly observed and been significantly influenced as a result.

Our article delves into understanding this relation between geopolitical stress and financial markets, particularly the equity market. To briefly explain our approach, we seek to quantify geopolitical stress through an observable Geopolitical Stress Index (GSI). Using this index, we can explore the relation between geopolitical sentiment, good and bad, and instruments available on financial market. Lastly, we seek to see if geopolitical sentiment is something that can be used to impact trading decisions and develop profitable trading strategies.

Overnight Reversal Effects in the High-Yield Market

August 26, 2024

High-yield bond ETFs represent a unique financial vehicle: they are highly liquid instruments that hold inherently illiquid securities, creating a fertile ground for predictable market behaviors. Our latest research uncovers an intriguing anomaly within these ETFs, similar to those observed in the stock market: overnight returns are systematically higher than intraday returns. This overnight anomaly in high-yield bonds is not only prevalent but also exhibits a distinct seasonal pattern, primarily from Monday’s close to Tuesday’s open and from Tuesday’s close to Wednesday’s open. Additionally, this anomaly displays a reversal characteristic, where overnight performance is typically more robust following a negative close-to-close performance in the preceding period. These findings reveal potential opportunities for trading strategies that leverage these consistent overnight return patterns, offering new insights into high-yield bond trading dynamics.

Lunch Effect in the U.S. Stock Market Indices

August 21, 2024

In the complex world of financial markets, subtle patterns often reveal themselves through careful observation and analysis. Among these is the intriguing phenomenon we can call the “Lunch Effect,” a pattern observed in U.S. stock indexes where market performance tends to exhibit a distinct positive shift immediately after the lunch break, following a typically negative or flat performance earlier in the trading day right before the lunch. This lunchtime revival is not an isolated occurrence; it shares a curious connection with the “Overnight Effect,” a well-documented tendency for the U.S. stock market to experience the bulk of its appreciation during non-trading hours, with relatively little movement during the trading day itself. Together, these effects underscore the intricate dynamics of market behavior, where timing and investor psychology play crucial roles in shaping intraday and overnight market performance. Understanding these patterns can offer valuable insights into the rhythm of the markets and the underlying factors that drive short-term price movements.

A Few Thoughts on Pragmatic Asset Allocation

June 27, 2024

One of the main reasons why the Pragmatic Asset Allocation Model was designed is to give investors a tax-efficient possibility to invest in a global equity portfolio with a lower risk than the passive buy&hold approach. Therefore, the PAA model is not the “absolute return” model but rather the tactical model that prefers to invest in the equity risk premium and move to the hedging portfolio (gold, treasuries, or cash), only for short periods and only when it’s absolutely necessary. We use price trend+momentum indicators and yield curve inversion as signals for such situations when (based on the past data) there is a higher probability of recessions and equity bear markets. What is unusual in the current situation is the length of time that the YC is inverted (19 months at the moment), which makes it the 2nd longest YC inversion in the last 100 years, and we are analyzing the implications for the PAA model.

Oh My! I Bought A Wrong Stock! – Investigation of Lead-Lag Effect in Easily-Mistyped Tickers

June 20, 2024

Our new study aims to investigate the lead-lag effect between prominent, widely recognized stocks and smaller, less-known stocks with similar ticker symbols (for example, TSLA / TLSA), a phenomenon that has received limited attention in financial literature. The motivation behind this exploration stems from the hypothesis that investors, especially retail investors, may inadvertently trade on less-known stocks due to ticker symbol confusion, thereby impacting their price movements in a manner that correlates with the leading stocks. By examining this potential misidentification effect, our research seeks to shed some light on this interesting factor.

Quantpedia Composite Seasonality in MesoSim

June 13, 2024

In one of our older posts titled ‘Case Study: Quantpedia’s Composite Seasonal / Calendar Strategy,’ we offer insights into seasonal trading strategies such as the Turn of the Month, FOMC Meeting Effect, and Option-Expiration Week Effect. These strategies, freely available in our database, are not only examined one by one, but are also combined and explored as a cohesive composite strategy. In partnership with Deltaray, using MesoSim — an options strategy simulator known for its unique flexibility and performance — we decided to explore and quantify how our Seasonal Strategy performs when applied to options trading. Our motivation is to investigate whether this strategy can be improved in terms of risk and return. We aim to systematically harvest the VRP (volatility risk premium) timing the entries using calendar strategy to avoid historically negative trading days.

Can Google Trends Sentiment Be Useful as a Predictor for Cryptocurrency Returns?

April 17, 2024

In the fast-paced world of cryptocurrencies, understanding market sentiment can provide a crucial edge. As investors and traders seek to anticipate the volatile movements of Bitcoin, innovative approaches are continuously explored. One such method involves leveraging Google Trends data to gauge public interest and sentiment towards Bitcoin. This approach assumes that search volume on Google not only reflects current interest but can also serve as a predictive tool for future price movements. This blog post delves into the intricacies of using Google Trends as a sentiment predictor, exploring its potential to forecast Bitcoin prices and discussing the broader implications of sentiment analysis in the financial market.

Cryptocurrency Market Dynamics Around Bitcoin Futures Expiration Events

March 27, 2024

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cryptocurrency markets, understanding the underlying dynamics that drive price movements and investor sentiment can be a matter of survival. However, there are myriad facets of trading reality, and the only thing that we can do is to slowly understand them one after another, one step at a time. This article picks one corner of the cryptocurrency market and sheds a little light on it. We have already written a few times about the importance of the introduction of Bitcoin futures and their impact on the Bitcoin price. Therefore, in this article, we will specifically examine Bitcoin’s behavior around the critical events when Bitcoin futures expire.

Systematic Hedging of the Cryptocurrency Portfolio

March 13, 2024

Cryptocurrencies are already one of the major asset classes. They fill the top pages of magazines and are a topic of a day to day conversation. There are a lot of ways to buy them through a lot of different channels. But some of the hardcore HODLers like to keep their coin portfolio safe – they buy a portfolio of cryptocurrencies and hold them in cold storage. It has a lot of advantages (you will probably not become a victim of hacking if your crypto coins are in cold storage in your wall safe) but also some disadvantages (your cold storage device can become unreadable or destroyed). One of the disadvantages of cold storage is that while you hold the cryptocurrencies in your cold storage, you are exposed to the price swings of the cryptocurrency market (which can be tremendous). But do you need to have this risk, especially when the market is at an all-time high? What if you smartly hedged a portion of your portfolio? The goal of this article is to serve as an inspiration for a hedging strategy for your cold storage cryptocurrency portfolio. We do not say this is the only way to run a hedging strategy, but we would like to inspire you to start thinking about this possibility even when you have not considered it yet. Are you ready? Then let’s go 🙂

How Much Bitcoin Should We Allocate To the Portfolio?

February 26, 2024

After years of waiting, the recent launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs marked a significant milestone in the cryptocurrency market, making Bitcoin even more accessible for investors. Spot ETFs provide a convenient and regulated way to gain exposure to Bitcoin without the need to hold the digital asset directly, potentially attracting a broader range of market participants. Many investors are waiting to see this change’s long-term impact on the cryptocurrency’s price while putting their faith in the potentially significant returns from Bitcoin within their investment portfolios. These events are taking place after two significant milestones in Bitcoin’s history – the introduction of BTC futures in 2017 and the launch of the BTC futures ETF (BITO) in 2021. While examining the whole history of Bitcoin may give the impression of a new super asset, we need to set realistic expectations. What have all these historical changes brought, and what lessons can we learn from similar occurrences involving other assets throughout history?