It was a year that saw record inflows of retail money into mutual funds and record outflow of foreign investors out of Indian markets. There were taper tantrums, Greece, GST #fail and so many worries. But the systematic and patient investor was rewarded for keeping a cool head.
In a wide ranging interview with Tyler Cowen, Cliff Asness discussed momentum and value investing strategies, disagreeing with Eugene Fama, the economics of Ayn Rand, bubble logic etc. The first half of the conversation was mostly about momentum investing and how it works.
Excepts on momentum:
Intro
A momentum investing strategy is the rather insane proposition that you can buy a portfolio of what’s been going up for the last 6 to 12 months, sell a portfolio of what’s been going down for the last 6 to 12 months, and you beat the market. Unfortunately for sanity, that seems to be true.
To some, it’s very intuitive. Just buy what’s going up.
Drawdowns
It has horrible streaks within that of not working. If your car worked like this, you’d fire your mechanic, if it worked like I use that word. I think it is harder than you might guess, even if something works long term, to have it go away because a lot of investors can’t live through the bad periods. They decide why it’s never going to work again at the wrong time.
Why it works
Underreation: News comes out. Price moves but not all the way. People update their priors but not fully efficiently. Therefore, just observing the price move is not going to move the same amount again but there’s some statistical tendency to continue.
Overreaction: People in fact do chase prices.
How to make it work
If you’re going to be momentum, you’ve got to really do it. You’ve got to be disciplined. You’ve got to come in every day, and you’ve got to count on these under- and overreaction things.
Momentum strategies on StockViz
We have been offering the Momentum Theme for more than two years now. It implements a relative momentum strategy where you compare the strengths of a universe of stocks to each other. 2014 returns were +90% and +36% so far this year (Compare.)
This year, we have introduced Velocity – an absolute momentum strategy – and Acceleration – a strategy that tracks changes in momentum.
If you are interested in momentum investing, please get in touch with us!
A recent paper in the Financial Analysts Journal looks at the Turn of the Month effect on equities. Equity Returns at the Turn of the Month, John J. McConnell and Wei Xu:
The turn-of-the-month effect in U.S. equities is found to be so powerful in the 1926–2005 period that, on average, investors received no reward for bearing market risk except at turns of the month. The effect is not confined to small-capitalization or low-price stocks, to calendar year-ends or quarter ends, or to the United States: This study finds that it occurs in 31 of the 35 countries examined. Furthermore, it is not caused by month-end buying pressure as measured by trading volume or net flows to equity funds. This persistent peculiarity in returns remains a puzzle in search of an answer.
Does it apply to Indian markets?
The study skips over the Indian markets. So we did a quick test on the CNX 100 index to check if the effect holds. Here’s the cumulative return chart between a Buy-and-Hold CNX 100 strategy (B&H, black) and a Turn-of-the-Month CNX 100 strategy (TOM, red):
Although the TOM strategy has lower-drawdowns, the B&H wins – both in terms of tax advantage and trading costs. The Turn-of-the-Month effect doesn’t seem to apply to Indian equities.
Back in October last year, we created two Themes to track the Diwali stock picks collated by ET and Kotak. ET had written that the 10 stocks that they assembled from the recommendations of four brokers could double by next Diwali.
However, between 2014-10-21 and 2015-11-02, ET Diwali Picks 2014 returned a cumulative 2.50% (IRR of 2.41%) vs. CNX Midcap’s cumulative return of 17.60% (16.10%.) While Kotak Diwali Picks 2014 has returned a cumulative 14.60% (14.11%.) (ET Picks, Kotak Picks)
ET has once again put out stock picks for this Diwali. You can track the portfolio here: Diwali Picks ET 2015
Every month, mutual funds disclose their portfolios and investors go to work on them to find investment ideas. But should they? Tracking their conviction buys – stocks that are new additions to their portfolios – tell a different story.
Median T+5, T+10 and T+20 returns were -0.13%, -0.93% and -1.3%
You were actually worse off following them if you were looking for a quick trade.
Does this mean fund managers miss the mark?
No. Their reason for buying a stock makes sense for the strategy and portfolio that they are running. Their time horizon extends beyond 20-days. Using their actions to guide your trading decisions is what misses the mark.
How is this data useful?
This is basically a negative result. The next time some fund manager is asked what he is buying on TV or you come across a media item that lists the most bought stocks, curb your instinct to go out and buy them.
If you really like what a fund manager is doing with his portfolio, it is cheaper to buy his fund rather than trying to do it yourself.