Cryptocurrencies are a new asset class, and researchers have just started to understand better fundamental forces which are behind their price action. A new research paper shows that Bitcoin’s price can be modeled by Metcalfe’s Law. Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are in this characteristic very similar to Facebook as their value depends on the number of active users – network size

Authors: Peterson

Title: Bitcoin Spreads Like a Virus

What are the main insights?

– The profitability and the optimal combination of ranking and holding periods of momentum strategies for a sample of Core and Peripheral European equity markets the profitability vary across markets

Dear readers,

With summer at full steam, July was a busy month for the Quantpedia team. Four new Quantpedia Premium strategies have been added into our database and four new related research papers have been included into existing Premium strategies.

Additionally, we have produced 21 new backtests written in QuantConnect code. Our database currently contains 90 strategies with such codes/backtests.

Also, four new blog posts you may find interesting have been published on our Quantpedia blog:

50 Years in PEAD (Post Earnings Announcement Drift) Research
Authors:  Sojka
Title:  50 Years in PEAD Research

Equity Factor Strategies In Frontier Markets
Authors: Zaremba, Maydybura, Czapkiewicz, Arnaut
Title:  Trends Everywhere

Two Versions of CAPM
Author:  Siddiqi
Title:  CAPM: A Tale of Two Versions

Factor Investing in Currency Markets
Authors:  Baku, Fortes, Herve, Lezmi, Malongo, Roncalli, Xu
Title:  Factor Investing in Currency Markets: Does it Make Sense?

Best regards,

Team Quantpedia.com
 

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A new research paper related to multiple currency strategies:

#5 – FX Carry Trade
#8 – Currency Momentum Factor
#9 – Currency Value Factor – PPP Strategy

Authors: Baku, Fortes, Herve, Lezmi, Malongo, Roncalli, Xu

Title: Factor Investing in Currency Markets: Does it Make Sense?

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3415700

Abstract:

The concept of factor investing emerged at the end of the 2000s and has completely changed the landscape of equity investing. Today, institutional investors structure their strategic asset allocation around five risk factors: size, value, low beta, momentum and quality. This approach has been extended to multi-asset portfolios and is known as the alternative risk premia model. This framework recognizes that the construction of diversified portfolios cannot only be reduced to the allocation policy between asset classes, such as stocks and bonds. Indeed, diversification is multifaceted and must also consider alternative risk factors. More recently, factor investing has gained popularity in the fixed income universe, even though the use of risk factors is an old topic for modeling the yield curve and pricing interest rate contingent claims. Factor investing is now implemented for managing portfolios of corporate bonds or emerging bonds.

In this paper, we focus on currency markets. The dynamics of foreign exchange rates are generally explained by several theoretical economic models that are commonly presented as competing approaches. In our opinion, they are more complementary and they can be the backbone of a Fama-French-Carhart risk factor model for currencies. In particular, we show that these risk factors
may explain a significant part of time-series and cross-section returns in foreign exchange markets. Therefore, this result helps us to better understand the management of forex portfolios. To illustrate this point, we provide some applications concerning basket hedging, overlay management and the construction of alpha strategies.

Notable quotations from the academic research paper:

"In this paper, we propose analyzing foreign exchange rates using three main risk factors: carry, value and momentum. The choice of these market risk factors is driven by the economic models of foreign exchange rates. For instance, the carry risk factor is based on the uncovered interest rate parity, the value risk factor is derived from equilibrium models of the real exchange rate, and the momentum risk factor benefits from the importance of technical analysis, trading behavior and overreaction/underreaction patterns. Moreover, analyzing an asset using these three dimensions helps to better characterize the financial patterns that impact an asset: its income, its price and its trend dynamics. Indeed, carry is associated with the yield of the asset, value measures the fair price or the fundamental risk and momentum summarizes the recent price movements.

By using carry, value and momentum risk factors, we are equipped to study the cross-section and time-series of currency returns. In the case of stocks and bonds, academics present their results at the portfolio level because of the large universe of these asset classes. Since the number of currencies is limited, we can show the results at the security level.

For each currency, we can then estimate the sensitivity with respect to each risk factor, the importance of common risk factors, when specific risk does matter, etc. We can also connect statistical figures with monetary policies and regimes, illustrating the high interconnectedness of market risk factors and economic risk factors. The primary goal of building an APT model for currencies is to have a framework for analyzing and comparing the behavior of currency returns. This is the main objective of this paper, and a more appropriate title would have been "Factor Analysis of Currency Returns". By choosing the title "Factor Investing in Currency Markets", we emphasize that our risk factor framework can also help to manage currency portfolios as security analysis always comes before investment decisions.

This paper is organized as follows. Section Two is dedicated to the economics of foreign exchange rates. We first introduce the concept of real exchange rate, which is central for understanding the different theories of exchange rate determination. Then, we focus on interest rate and purchasing power parities. Studying monetary models and identifying the statistical properties of currency returns also helps to define the market risk factors, which are presented in Section Three. These risk factors are built using the same approach in terms of portfolio composition and rebalancing. Section Four presents the cross-section and time-series analysis of each currency. We can then estimate a time-varying APT-based model in order to understand the dynamics of currency markets. The results of this dynamic model can be used to manage a currency portfolio. This is why Section Five considers hedging and
overlay management."

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This week's analysis of selected financial research paper contains more text and no picture, but we still think it's worth reading …

Authors: Siddiqi

Title: CAPM: A Tale of Two Versions

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3350280

Abstract:

Given that categorization is the core of cognition, we argue that investors do not view firms in isolation. Rather, they view them within a framework of categories that represent prior knowledge. This involves sorting a given firm into a category and using categorization-induced inferences to form earnings and discount-rate expectations. If earnings-aspect is categorization-relevant, then earnings estimates are refined, whereas discount-rates are confounded with the category-exemplar. The opposite happens when discount-rates are categorization relevant. Earnings-focused approach such as DCF, generally used by institutional investors, leads to a version of CAPM in which the relationship between average excess return and stock beta is flat (possibly negative). Value effect and size premium (controlling for quality) arise in this version. Discount-rate focused approach such as multiples or comparables valuation, typically used by individual investors, leads to a second version in which the relationship is strongly positive with growth stocks doing better. The two-version CAPM accounts for several recent empirical findings including fundamentally different intraday vs overnight behavior, as well as behavior on macroeconomic announcement days. Momentum is expected to be an overnight phenomenon, which is consistent with empirical findings. We argue that, perhaps, our best shot at observing classical CAPM in its full glory is a laboratory experiment with subjects who have difficulty categorizing (such as in autism spectrum disorders).

Notable quotations from the academic research paper:

"Consider the following two empirical observations:

Firstly, stock prices behave very differently with respect to their sensitivity to market risk (beta) at specific times. Typically, average excess return and beta relationship is flatter than expected. It could even be negative. However, during specific times, this relationship is strongly positive, such as on days when macroeconomic announcements are made or during the night.

Secondly, a hue, which is halfway between yellow and orange, is seen as yellow on a banana and orange on a carrot. In this article, we argue that the two observations are driven by the same underlying mechanism.

The second observation is an example of the implications of categorization for color calibration. In this article, we argue that the first observation is also due to categorization, which gives rise to two versions of CAPM. In one version, the relationship between expected return and stock beta is flatter than expected or could even be negative, whereas in the second version, this relationship is strongly positive.

Categorization is the mental operation by which brain classifies objects and events. We do not experience the world as a series of unique events. Rather, we make sense of our experiences within a framework of categories that represent prior knowledge. That is, new information is only understood in the context of prior knowledge.

Here, in accord with cognitive science literature, we present a view of categorization that has both an upside as well as a downside, and apply this nuanced perspective to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). If categorization is fundamental to how our brains make sense of information, then investor behavior, like any other domain of human behaviour, should also be viewed through this lens. This means that the traditional view that each firm is viewed in isolation needs to be altered. When an investor considers a firm, she views it within a framework of categories that represent prior knowledge. This involves sorting a given firm into a category based on attributes that are deemed categorization-relevant. Categorization-induced inferences help refine such attributes while confounding categorization-irrelevant attributes with the category-exemplar.

Valuation requires estimating earnings (cash-flows) potential and estimating discount-rates. Even among firms that sell similar products (same sector) some may have more similar earnings potential, whereas other may have more similar discount-rates. The former type may include firms with similar earnings-related fundamentals but very different levels of debt ratio and equity betas. Also, their multiples (generally related to inverse of the discount-rate) such as P/E, EV/Sales or EV/EBITDA could be very different. The latter type may include firms with similar debt ratios and equity betas or similar P/E and EV/EBITDA but quite different earnings or cash-flows fundamentals.

We argue that, an earnings-focused approach, such as discounted cash-flows (DCF), tends to categorize the former type of firms together, whereas, the relative valuation approach (RV) based on multiples such as P/E or EV/EBITDA tends to categorize the latter types of firms together. In other words, the choice of a valuation approach introduces a bias in how firms are categorized.

In this paper, we take discounted cash-flows (DCF) as the prototype of an earnings-potential focused approach, and valuation by multiples or relative valuation (RV) as the prototype discount-rate focused approach.

We show that when earnings aspect is categorization-relevant (as in DCF analysis), a version of CAPM is obtained, which displays a flatter or even negative relationship between stock beta and expected excess returns. Betting-against-beta anomaly is observed along with the value effect, as well as the size premium after controlling for quality (consistent with the findings in Asness et al 2018). We argue that this is the default version which typically prevails. While categorizing firms, if investors are focused on the discount rate aspect (as in RV analysis), then the discount-rates are refined whereas earnings estimates are confounded with the category-exemplar. A second version of CAPM arises. In this version, there is a strong positive relationship between beta and expected excess return.

One way to make sense of the co-existence of two versions is to classify investors as either earnings-focused or discount rate-focused. If earnings-focused investors dominate, then the first version is observed. If the discount-rate-focused investors dominate, then the second version is observed. Note, that earnings-focused approach (such as DCF) is typically employed by large institutional investors, whereas RV approach is associated with individual investors (and with sell-side equity analysts who publish research reports for individual investors).

If institutional investors are earnings-focused and individual investors are discount rate-focused, then the trading behavior of each type can be observed to make specific predictions:

1) Institutional investors typically avoid trading at the open and prefer to trade in the afternoon near the market close. The objective is to time the trade when the market is most liquid to avoid any adverse price impact. This means that trade at open is dominated by individual investors. So, one expects to see the relationship between stock beta and average return to be strongly positive (second version) overnight and flat or even negative (first version) intraday.

2) Institutional traders typically trade in the right direction prior to macroeconomic announcement days (suggesting superior information) with institutional trading volume falling sharply on macro-announcement days. As trade on such days is dominated by individual investors, one expects to see a strongly positive relationship (second version) on macro-announcement days.

3) The first version generally dominates intraday due to institutional investors being dominant. As the corresponding CAPM version comes with size and value effects, the prediction is that size and value are primarily intraday phenomena.

4) We show that, all else equal, discount rate-focused investors have higher willingness-to-pay than earnings-focused investors. If discount rate-focused investors dominate trade at open, whereas earnings-focused investors are active intraday, then one expects prices to typically rise overnight from close-to-open and fall intraday between open-to-close.

5) If momentum traders, who buy past winners and short past losers, are primarily individual investors, then one expects momentum to be an overnight phenomenon observed between close-to-open. This is because individual traders dominate trade at or near open.

"

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A new research paper related to all equity factor strategies …

Authors: Zaremba, Maydybura, Czapkiewicz, Arnaut

Title: Explaining Equity Anomalies In Frontier Markets: A Horserace of Factor Pricing Models

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3378785

Abstract:

We are the first to compare the explanatory power of the major empirical asset pricing models over equity anomalies in the frontier markets. We replicate over 160 stock market anomalies in 23 frontier countries for years 1996–2017, and evaluate their performance with the factor models. The Carhart’s (1997) four-factor model outperforms both the recent Fama and French (2015) five-factor model and the q-model by Hou, Xue, and Zhang (2015). Its superiority is driven by the ability to explain the momentum-related anomalies. Inclusion of additional profitability and investment factors lead to no further major improvement in the performance. Nonetheless, none of the models is able to fully explain the abnormal returns on all of the anomaly portfolios.

Notable quotations from the academic research paper:

"In times of soaring correlations among global stocks and increasing controversies on anomaly performance in emerging stock markets, one specific asset class may offer a remedy: frontier equities. Deemed the least developed emerging markets, the frontier countries are scattered around the globe, with presence in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Being very diverse both economically and geographically, they range from the wealthy oil-producing kingdoms in the Gulf to some of the poorest countries in Africa. While the current size of the frontier stock markets is still fairly small – the total capitalization of the MSCI Frontier Market Index constituents equaled $134 billion in May 2018 (MSCI, 2018), accounting for less than 0.4% of developed markets – yet, the interest in them is growing quickly.

Considering the future potential, along with the soaring interest of the international community, and the investment opportunities, it is surprising how underresearched – if not ignored – the frontier equities are. The number of academic studies on this stock market class seems astonishingly modest. This leaves numerous important questions, which may be of huge importance for global investors, unanswered. Which equity anomalies – discovered originally in developed countries – work also in the frontier stock markets? Could they be translated into profitable strategies using easily-to-implement quantitative methods? Finally, which asset pricing models and factors best summarize the cross-sectional return patterns and the equity anomalies in frontier countries? Could the recent five-factor framework by Fama and French (2015) or the q-model by Hou, Xue, and Zhang (2015) be also applied in this growing asset class? The principal target of this study is to close this gap in the existing body of literature at least partially.

The elevated liquidity constraints, higher trading costs, short sale unavailability accompanied by less sophisticated investors may potentially result in larger mispricing and more pronounced stock market anomalies.

Our research aims to contribute in three primary ways. Our first goal is to conduct the most comprehensive test on which equity anomalies, discovered originally in the developed countries, are also present in the frontier equities. Thus, we examine the performance of 167 anomalies from the finance literature, encompassing different classes of patterns related to value, trend following, investment, profitability, risk, and many others. The large-scale analysis available in broadly-accessible journals was either limited to the few most prominent strategies, such as size, value, and momentum (Blackburn and Cakici 2017, De Groot, Pang, and Swinkels 2012). Our study aims to take a substantial leap forward in understanding the multidimensionality of equity returns in the frontier markets.

Second, we research which of the broadly-acknowledged asset pricing models serve best in explaining the cross-section of anomaly returns in the frontier markets. In particular, we consider seven factor pricing models: the capital asset pricing model (Sharpe 1964), abbreviated CAPM, the three-factor model (Fama and French 1993), abbreviated FF3, the four-factor model (Carhart 1997), abbreviated C4, the five-factor model (Fama and French 2015), abbreviated FF5, the q-model by Hou, Xue, and Zhang (2015), the six-factor model by Fama and French (2018), abbreviated FF6, and the six-factor model by Barillas and Shanken (2018), abbreviated BS6.

Last but not least, our research may be regarded as a large out-of-sample test of equity anomalies.

To answer our research questions, we replicate the 167 equity anomalies from Zaremba et al. (2018) in an extensive sample of over 3,600 companies from frontier markets from all over the world for years 1996 – 2017. We form the long-short anomaly portfolios and evaluate their returns using the seven considered factor pricing models: CAPM, FF3, C4, FF5, Q4, FF6, and BS6. We compare the models’ performance by employing a range of tools and statistics that assess their ability to explain the risk and mean returns jointly.

The principal findings of this study could be summarized as follows. First, out of the 167 anomaly portfolios, only 38% (19%) of the equal-weighted (value-weighted) long-short strategies produce profits significantly departing from zero at the 5% level. The successful return patterns are usually linked to the “value vs. growth” or trend following effects, verifying positively the arguments of Asness, Moskowitz, and Pedersen (2013) that value and momentum are everywhere.

Second, we demonstrate that Carhart’s (1997) four-factor model best explains the anomaly returns in frontier markets, outperforming other models in many ways. It displays lower average absolute intercepts and largest number of explained anomalies. Its cross-sectional and time-series R2 is higher CAPM, FF3, FF5, or Q4, and only marginally lower than in the case of FF6 and BS6.

"

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