Implementation shortfall, whether from trading costs, discontinuous trading, or other frictions, erodes the performance of any investment strategy. These frictions, along with asset management fees, are the main sources of the sometimes-vast gap between live results and paper portfolio...

Factor investing has been around for several decades, backed by an enormous body of literature, and yet it is still surrounded by much confusion and debate. Some of the rhetoric and myths have existed for a long time, while others have arisen in response to the difficult performance from 2018 to...

From April 2020 through at least the end of 2021, Americans died from non-COVID causes at an average annual rate 97,000 in excess of previous trends. Hypertension and heart disease deaths combined were elevated 32,000. Diabetes or obesity, drug-induced causes, and alcohol-induced causes were...

Traditional capitalization-weighted indices generally add stocks with high valuation multiples after persistent outperformance and sell stocks at low valuation multiples after persistent underperformance. For the S&P 500 Index, in the year after a change in the index, additions lose relative to...

Across 14 developed-economy countries over the last half-century, the authors analyze the behavior of inflation once a country’s inflation rate surges past various thresholds and study how long a burst of inflation typically lingers. If history is a guide, inflation can take far longer to...

In the 1980s, there was a famous TV ad for Wendy’s with the tagline “Where’s the Beef?” Many investors in today’s so-called smart beta strategies may well be asking a similar question, “Where’s the Alpha?” Investors frequently buy into historical simulations or backtests, often...

This paper applies the “big market delusion” concept developed by Cornell and Damodaran to the electric vehicles market. The hallmark of a big market delusion is when all the firms in the evolving industry rise together even though they are often direct competitors. Investors become so...