Blog Archives

Profiting from the Consensus Stock Holdings of Ten Large Hedge Funds (iM-10LargeHedgeFundSelect)

  • This is a copycat trading strategy based on the quarterly 13F filings of 10 large hedge funds with assets under management (AUM) greater than $3.5-Billion.
  • The algorithm looks at the top 20 largest holdings from each of the 10 filers and then picks the 15 most frequently held stocks among all of the filers.
  • The model selects 12 of the 15 consensus picks from this hedge fund group with a ranking system based on quality.
  • Changes in the holdings occur only every three months, about 45 days after the end of a quarter when 13F filings become public information, February, May, August, and November.
  • From Feb-2008 to Aug-2020 this strategy would have produced an annualized return (CAGR) of 27.6%, significantly more than the 10.1% CAGR of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) over this period.

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A Dividend Growth Strategy for Perennial Income

  • A simulation of this strategy with annual withdrawal rates of up to 10% still showed long-term growth which exceeded that of buy-and-hold the S&P 500 ETF (SPY).
  • The backtests use the FactSet stock database and FactSet’s Revere Business Industry Classifications System (RBICS).
  • The model holds equal-weight 10 stocks of the Russell 1000 index which are ranked with a simple ranking system to identify shares of the highest “quality” companies.
  • The strategy provides a high dividend yield because a minimum yield excess (depending on RBICS sector type) over the yield of SPY is a critirium for stock selection.
  • From Jan-2000 to Jun-2020 this strategy without withdrawals would have produced an annualized return (CAGR) of 21.5%, much more than the 5.6% CAGR obtained from SPY over the same period.

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Covid-19 Recession — No Sign of a Recovery: The iM-Weekly Unemployment Monitor

  • A truer picture of the employment situation is extracted from the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims (UIWC) report.
  • Persons receiving some form of unemployment benefit account for 18.6% of the labor force and not 13.3% – the official unemployment rate. 
  • Monitoring of the weekly insured unemployed can provide early indication of recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.
  • No meaningful economic recovery is identified from the current UIWC report.

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Profiting from the Consensus Stock Holdings of Five Hedge Funds (iM-5HedgeFundSelect)

  • This is a copycat trading strategy based on the quarterly 13F filings of five hedge funds.
  • The model holds the top 20 consensus picks from a group of five hedge funds.
  • Changes in the holdings occur only every three months when the end-of-the-month 13F filings becomes public information.
  • From Jan-2007 to May-2020 this strategy would have produced an annualized return (CAGR) of 27.1%, much more than the 7.8% CAGR of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

Rational for a Copycat Strategy

Research from Barclay and Novus published in October 2019 found that a stock selection copycat strategy that combines conviction and consensus of fund managers that have longer-term views outperformed the S&P 500 by 3.80% on average annually from Q1 2004 to Q2 2019.

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Robust Recession Forecasting With The FED’s Brave-Butters-Kelley Indexes ─ Update February 4, 2020

  • The new Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Brave-Butters-Kelley Indexes ( BBK ) provide useful input for recession forecasting.
  • In the past, low estimates of BBK GDP growth related to the respective recessions, this allow the extraction of a recession warning signal from this growth series.
  • We combine two BBK indexes with the Conference Board LEI and iMarketSignals’ Business Cycle Index BCIg to derive our Long Leading Index (iM-LLI) for the US economy.
  • Currently neither index signals a recession warning.

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Robust Recession Forecasting With Our New Long Leading Index For The US Economy

  • The new Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Brave-Butters-Kelley Indexes (BBK) provide useful input for recession forecasting.
  • We combine two BBK indexes with the Conference Board LEI and our Business Cycle Index BCIg to derive iMarketSignals’ new Long Leading Index (iM-LLI) for the US economy.
  • Our analysis shows that the iM-LLI would have provided an average warning signal about eight months before the start of recessions, as observed for the last seven recessions since 1967.
  • We are replacing the iM-Composite Index (COMP) with the new iM-LLI.
  • Currently this Leading Index is not yet warning of an oncoming recession.

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Recession Forecasting With the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Newly Released Brave-Butters-Kelley Indexes

  • From November 2019 onward, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is releasing new measures of monthly real GDP growth and its components, the Brave-Butters-Kelley Indexes.
  • The data release is for four indicators constructed from a panel of 500 monthly macroeconomic time series and quarterly real gross domestic product growth.
  • Our analysis shows that apart from the Leading Index, the other three indicators would have been extremely accurate identifying recessions were it not for the publication time-lag.
  • This time-lag makes, on average, these indicators about two month late to signal the start and end of recessions in real-time, as observed for the last seven recessions since 1967.
  • Currently none of the Brave-Butters-Kelley Index models are warning of a recession.

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Estimating 10-Year Forward Returns For Stocks With The Shiller CAPE Ratio And The Long-Term Trend – Update January 2020 

  • The average of S&P 500 for Dec-2019 was 3166; that is 852 (i.e. 27% of 3166) above the Jan-2020 level of the long-term trend line.
  • The Shiller Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings Ratio (CAPE) is at a relatively high level of 30.1, and the 35-year moving average (MA35) of the CAPE is at 24.2.
  • The CAPE-MA35 ratio is 1.25, forecasting a 10-year annualized real return of 5.9%.
  • Investing in equities for the long-haul when the CAPE-MA35 ratio is below 1.30 should produce reasonable returns, as this level of the ratio does not indicate an abnormally overvalued market.

Posted in 2020, blogs, featured

The iM Tax-Efficient Seasonal ETF Switching Strategy

  • This strategy exploits the anomaly that Cyclical Sectors and Small Caps perform best from November to April, and Defensive Sectors do better from May to October during most years.
  • Three identical models starting 6 months apart are used. Each model holds only one ETF for 18 months selected by a simple ranking system from the cyclical and defensive groups.
  • The effect of this is that the combination model always has 66% of the portfolio in the “correct” direction, defensive or cyclical, and 33% in the “wrong” direction.
  • The combination model trades only twice a year, switching only one position at the end of April and end of October.
  • For the approximately 18.5 year period from end of Apr-2000 to Sep-2019 the backtest showed an annualized return of 12.3% with a maximum drawdown of -24%.

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A Profitable Investment Strategy When The Yield Curve Inverts

  • An interest rate environment in which long-term debt instruments have a lower yield than short-term debt instruments of the same credit quality is considered to be a predictor of recessions.
  • Prior to recession it is advisable to exit the stock market and invest in U.S. Treasuries instead; in this strategy using as proxies ETFs (SPY) and (IEF), respectively.
  • This model uses the 2-year and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields as measures of short-term and long-term rates, respectively, and calculates the Forward Rate Ratio (FRR2-10) between the two rates.
  • FRR2-10 is the ratio of the rate at which one can lock in borrowing for the eight year period starting two years from now and the current ten-year rate itself.
  • Currently the FRR2-10 is near 1.0 signifying that US economic activity is near the end of the expansion phase of this business cycle.

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