Excess Returns
Episodes
The Pros and Cons of Quantitative and Discretionary Investing
28 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We all have a tendency to believe that the way we invest is the best way. As quantitative investors, we can sometimes feel that there is no reason any...
Interview: Timeless Investing and Life Lessons with Jim O’Shaughnessy
21 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this week's episode we are privileged to be joined by Jim O'Shaughnessy. Jim is a pioneer in quantitative investing and the founder of O'Shaughness...
The Danger of Focusing on What Should Be and Missing What Is
14 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We all have our beliefs about the way that things should work in investing. When the market gets overvalued, we think it should go down. When value st...
Quality and Low Volatility: The Factors That Shouldn't Work
07 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Investing factors that work over time typically do so for one of two reasons: they either produce an excess return by taking on additional risk or the...
Interview: Systematic Value Investing with Wes Gray
31 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Wes Gray is the founder of Alpha Architect, the author of Quantitative Value and Quantitative Momentum, and an expert in systematic investing. I...
An In Depth Look at Momentum Investing
24 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Momentum investing is difficult to understand for many investors. While a concept like value that involves trying to buy stocks at a discount to what ...
The Pros and Cons of Factor Timing
17 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are all trained to buy low and sell high, and it is tempting to conclude that we can do the same thing with factors. But the research suggests that...
The Challenges of Multi-Factor Investing
10 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The basic theory of multi-factor investing is pretty simple. It has been widely proven that factors like value and momentum can outperform the market ...
The Impact of COVID-19 on Value Investing
03 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The process of using past fundamentals to try to predict future prices has been in place for a very long time, and there is substantial academic evide...
Psychology and COVID-19 with Dr. Daniel Crosby
26 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this week's episode we shift gears a little from our usual investing focus. We wanted to spend some time talking about the current COVID-19 crisis ...
The Limits to Lessons From Past Bear Markets
19 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever we are confronted with a bear market, we all want to figure out how it will play out. We want to know how big the decline will be. We want to...
The Dangers of Hindsight Bias
12 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever any of us analyze the decisions we make in investing, there is always a tendency to think that what we end up knowing in retrospect was obvio...
Interview: Value Investing with Tobias Carlisle
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s Excess Returns, we are trying something new. In addition to our regular episodes, we have decided to periodically talk to some of the...
The Importance of Challenging Your Own Beliefs
29 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Confirmation bias is one of the most damaging biases in investing. All of us want to be right. We all want to think that opinions that disagree with o...
Looking at Different Ways to Manage Risk
22 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are many ways to manage risk in a portfolio. Traditional methods like blending stocks with bonds will work for most investors, but more creative...
Q&A: Answering Investors' Questions in Uncertain and Volatile Times
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the market in the midst of a significant decline and uncertainty reaching levels we haven't seen in many years, we have received many questions a...
Some Thoughts on Market Panics
15 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The argument that investors should stay the course during market declines is an easy one to make. It also in most cases is the correct one, since figu...
Some Thoughts on the Struggles of Factor Investing in the Past Decade
08 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The long-term evidence to support factor investing is compelling. Academic work has shown that factors like value and momentum have produced an excess...
The Dangers of Headline Investing
01 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The recent market sell off related to the Coronavirus has many investors worried. And with good reason. When panics like this set in, we all ten...
The Pros and Cons of Trend Following
23 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To say that the track record of market timers in general is dismal would be an understatement. There are so many factors that impact market returns th...
The Pitfalls of Back Testing
16 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Back testing is one of the most misused tools in investment management. Almost every back test outperforms the market, but those same strategies often...
Lessons From Our Most Read Five Questions Interviews
09 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this week's episode, we talk about the biggest lessons from the first year of our Five Questions interview series. Our Five Questions series featur...
The Benefits of a Value Composite
02 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Picking the right value metric can be one of the biggest challenges of quantitative value investing. Although the Price/Book is the most widely used v...
The Perils of Market Forecasting
26 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have just completed market prediction season. Its the time of year where there are countless forecasts about what the economy will do in the new ye...
The Challenges of Developing a Sell Strategy
19 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As difficult as it is to figure out the right stocks to buy, determining when to sell can be even more challenging. In this episode, we look at the im...
Bonus: Long Live Value Investing?
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After we finished recording this week's episode on the case against value stocks, we kept the recorder rolling and we have included that audio in this...
The Case Against Value Stocks
12 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Confirmation bias is one of the biggest problems in investing. We all have a set of core beliefs, and we tend to surround ourselves with people who al...
The Double Edged Sword of Avoiding Value Traps
05 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many value stocks are cheap because they deserve to be. Some of them no longer have sustainable businesses, and as a result their current discounted m...
Lessons From the March For the Fallen
29 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Justin's experience participating on the Alpha Architect team in last year's March for the Fallen. and how some of the les...
Six Common Misconceptions About Factor-Based Strategies
22 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Factor strategies have grown exponentially in the past decade. Almost every major asset manager now offers their variation of things like value, momen...
The Rising Bar for Active Management
15 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The market has always been tough to beat, but the ability to investors to gain inexpensive exposure to factors like value and momentum has made the jo...
The Mechanics of Value Investing
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There is a tendency to believe that all value investing strategies are similar. But beneath the surface, many value approaches couldn’t be any more ...
Excess Returns (Trailer)
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why Most Investors Won't Buy the Best Diversifier | Andrew Beer on Managed Futures
01 Jan 1970
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Excess Returns, we sit down with Andrew Beer to break down managed futures, hedge fund replication, diversification, and what inves...