Post–earnings-announcement drift (abbr. PEAD) is a well-researched phenomenon that describes the tendency for a stock’s cumulative abnormal returns to drift in the direction of an earnings surprise for some time (several weeks or even several months) following an earnings announcement. There have been many explanations for the existence of this phenomenon. One of the most widely accepted explanations for the effect is that investors under-react to the earnings announcements. Although we already addressed such an effect in some of our previous articles and strategies, we now present a handy method of improving the PEAD by using linguistic analysis of earnings call transcripts.

Equity Value strategies have suffered hardly during years 2018, 2019 and also 2020. Due to the poor performance of Value during this period, many investors have abandoned the strategy, often expressing view that “Value strategy is not working anymore”. Nevertheless, equity Value strategies have managed a strong comeback recently, turning attention of investors and traders back to them. In our blog today, we will take a close look at many different equity Value strategies, their performance and how they behave. 

How often do you think about the weights of the assets in your portfolio? Do you weigh your assets equally, or do you prefer value-weighting? The researchers behind a recent research paper analyzed various weighting schemes and examined their effect on factor strategy return. They studied five weighting schemes that ignore prices: equal weighting, rank weighting, z-score weighting, inverse volatility weighting, and fundamental weighting, and three price-based weighting schemes: Rank x mcap (rank-times-mcap), Z-score x mcap (z-score-times-mcap), and Integrated core.

They found that schemes that are not based on price can inflate turnover and costs. However, the weighting schemes based on price are the most practical to target multiple premiums, provide robust risk control, and decrease turnover and expenses.

This second article offers a different look at high inflation periods, which we already analyzed in What’s the Best Factor for High Inflation Periods? – Part I. The second part looks at factor performance during two 10-year periods of high inflation. What’s our main takeaway? The best hedge for a high inflation period is the value or momentum factor. Other promising factors (energy sector, small-cap stocks, or long-run reversal) don’t perform as consistently as value and momentum.