Equity long short

In part 1 of our article, we analyzed tendencies and trends among the Top 10 quantitative strategies of 2021. Thanks to Quantpedia Pro’s screener, we published several interesting insights about them.

In part 2 of our article, we got deeper into the first five specific strategies, which are significantly outperforming the rest in 2021. 

Today, without any further thoughts, let’s proceed to the five single best performing strategies of 2021 as of August 2021.

As of the first half of August, the year 2021 seems to be a phenomenal year for equities. World equities have earned more than +16%, and US equities, even more, topping +20% gains. Is there even any better strategy this year than just holding US equities? Well, yes, there are actually several of them. Are they all tied to US equities? Many of them are, but many of them are not. Some of them are not even tied to equities at all.

Note: This blog is Part 1 of a series. Part 2 is available here, and Part 3 is available here.

Summer Olympics are a major event that attracts attention from the moment the host country is announced. However, that’s not shocking. The Olympics require a lot of planning, infrastructure building and investments. Still, countries battle for the opportunity to host these events. Undoubtedly, hosting the Olympics is prestigious, helps tourism, and many even argue that it also helps the domestic economy despite the costs of hosting. Therefore, it is natural to expect that the Tokyo Olympics should impact the domestic stock market.

Volatility clustering is a well-known effect in equity markets. In simple meaning, volatility clustering refers to a tendency of large changes in asset prices to follow large changes and small changes in asset prices to follow small changes. This interesting effect can be sometimes uncovered as one of the reasons for the functionality of some selected trading strategies. For example, low-volatility months in stock indexes (like the S&P 500 Index) are usually also months with higher performance. As volatility tends to cluster, a low volatility month in the present can signal a low volatility month with a better performance also in the future.

Based on this, we will be testing two hypotheses: (1) firstly, if there is a volatility clustering anomaly present in equity factor strategies; (2) secondly, if there is any performance pattern related to volatility.

The R&D investments represent a company’s unique expenditure, which is responsible for creating an information asymmetry about the firm’s growth potential and future prospects. In a case when market value reflects only the firm’s financial statements without taking the long-term benefits of R&D investments into consideration, the company’s stocks may be underpriced. On the other hand, the firm’s stock prices may also face overpricing. This might happen in a case when the investors judge the possible future outcomes of current R&D investment based on the past firm’s R&D success, which is not a guarantee by any means.

This week’s blog is unique compared to our previous posts. We have identified two papers that are connected, each with interesting findings and implications. One of today’s leading topics is the Robinhood trading platform, but not from the point of view of recent short squeezes and speculations. The Robinhood can be an interesting insight into retail investing and implications for the market. Research suggests that despite the very low share of retail investors, their power is significantly high. This seems to be caused by the inelastic market, which passive investing contributes to. Therefore, inelasticity is another crucial point.