Excess Returns
Episodes
Some Options for Managing Risk After a Big Market Run
16 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The stock market has had a huge run since last March. That fact, combined with unprecedented government stimulus, the potential for future inflation a...
An In Depth Look at Asset Allocation with Jim Masturzo of Research Affiliates
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are currently in a very challenging time for building multi-asset portfolios. The 60-40 portfolios is coming off one of its best decades ever, but ...
Strategy Focus: Low Volatility Investing and the Conservative Formula
09 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The success of of the low volatility factor can be challenging to explain. Investing theory teaches us that to get an additional return, we need to ta...
Six Potential Metrics to Help Limit Value Traps
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Deep value investing is about buying companies that other investors don’t want. It is about investing in companies where the current situation doesn...
Investing in Freedom in Emerging Markets with Perth Tolle, Founder of Life + Liberty Indexes
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The emerging market universe includes a very diverse set of countries, many of which are sorely lacking in the types of freedom enjoyed by their peopl...
Academic Research Spotlight: Migration by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French
25 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we look at some interesting research that took a unique approach to explaining the value and size premiums. We examine the paper "Migration...
The Three Keys to Understanding Investing Bubbles
18 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With the stock market at all-time highs and returns over the past year some of the best in history, the word "bubble" is getting thrown around more an...
A Detailed Look at All Weather Investing with Eric Crittenden
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The last 40 years have been an exceptionally strong period for a portfolio of stocks and bonds. With stocks performing well and bonds benefitting from...
The Changing Nature of Momentum Investing
11 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Investors tend to associate momentum with growth stocks. If you try to name a typical momentum stock off the top of your head, you will probably think...
The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Major Value Metrics
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many investors think all value strategies are fairly similar to each other. And as a result they expect the value funds they invest in will all perfor...
The History of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett with Adam Mead
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There have been hundreds of books written about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. So it rare for a book come out that does something that none of...
Quantifying The Motley Fool’s Small Cap Growth Investment Strategy
28 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Motley Fool is not known for their quantitative models. They are known for a discretionary growth style of investing that attempts to identify gam...
Rafael Resendes On Intrinsic Value, Economic Margin and How Some Value Models Have Lost Their Way
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Systematic value strategies have had one of the worst performing periods in their history in the past decade. This extended underperformance, coupled ...
What Has Really Driven the Rebound in Value Stocks?
21 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is a popular narrative out there that value investing is back. And it makes sense given the huge run that many value funds have had off the mark...
Machine Learning, Fantasy Football and Factor Investing with Kevin Zatloukal
14 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are joined by Kevin Zatloukal. Kevin teaches Computer Science at the University of Washington and has his Ph.D. in Computer Scienc...
Lessons From Warren Buffett's 2021 Annual Letter
07 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss the major points Warren Buffett covered in his 2021 annual letter and talk about some lessons investors can learn from the...
Bridgeway Founder John Montgomery On Their Unique Culture and Lessons From a 25+ Year Career in Quant Investing
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are joined by John Montgomery, the founder and CIO of Bridgeway Capital Management. Bridgeway is unique in the world of Wall Stree...
Academic Research Spotlight: Replicating Anomalies by Lu Zhang, Chen Xue and Kewei Hou
28 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are trying something new. There is so much academic research out there about markets, and what drives their returns over time, tha...
GameStop: What Happened, How it Happened, and Lessons We Can Learn From It
21 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The rapid rise and fall of GameStop earlier this year was unlike anything many of us have seen in our investing careers. The stock's price went from t...
The Elusive Definition of Risk – And Some Practical Ways to Measure It
14 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Risk is one of the most difficult concepts in investing to define. Part of that is because we face many risks as investors that come from many differe...
A Detailed Look at Joel Greenblatt's Magic Formula Method
07 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joel Greenblatt produced exceptional returns as managing partner at Gotham Capital, a New York City-based hedge fund he founded. The firm averaged a r...
An In Depth Look at Momentum Investing and Trend Following with Jack Vogel
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is perhaps no investment factor with more long-term data to support it than momentum. But despite that, its real world usage lags far behind oth...
The Impact of Intangible Assets on Value Investing
31 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our economy is changing. Gone are the days where the biggest companies require substantial physical assets to operate and grow their businesses. Most ...
Interview: Replicating Private Equity Returns In Public Markets with Verdad’s Brian Chingono
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are many misconceptions about private equity. Most investors see it as a domain where high net worth investors and institutions earn returns tha...
Examining the Arguments Against Value Investing
24 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After a decade of struggle, the past six months have finally given value investors reasons for optimism. Although the recent outperformance pale...
Why Dividend Investing May Be Overrated
17 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dividend based investing strategies are very popular among investors. The ability to receive regular cash payments from the equities they own and a be...
Breaking Down the Investment Strategy of Peter Lynch
10 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Lynch is one of the most successful mutual fund managers of all time. Lynch guided Fidelity Investment's Magellan Fund to a 29.2 percent average...
The Importance of Expectations in Investing
03 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is a common misconception that a good company is always a good investment. But that sometimes isn't the case. The reason for that comes down to ...
The Biggest Lessons From Our Five Most Popular Interviews of 2020
27 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we started our podcast late last year, we were hoping we could create something that would be educational and informative for people who follow o...
Eight Timeless Lessons All Investors Can Learn From Warren Buffett
20 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No investor can match the combination of Warren Buffett's annual returns and the period of time he has been able to sustain them. Buffett has generate...
Making Sense of Fed Intervention, Fiscal Stimulus and MMT with Cullen Roche
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The way economic policy is implemented has undergone some major changes in the past decade. The Federal Reserve's response to the Great Financial Cris...
Twin Momentum: Combining Fundamental and Price Momentum Together In One Quantitative Model
13 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The academic research supporting the momentum factor is very strong. But most of that research focuses on the momentum in a stock's price.  ...
Lessons From Our First Year of Podcasting
06 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have reached the one year anniversary of the podcast so we wanted to take a break from our regular investing episodes for a week and reflect back o...
Why Eliminating Discretion from Quantitative Models is Harder Than You Think
29 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is a tendency for those of us who support quant models to talk about them as if they are these things that just run on autopilot over the long-t...
Is Value Investing Dead?
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Value investing has struggled for over a decade now. Although no one will dispute that fact, there are significant disagreements about whether this is...
Why You Shouldn’t Try To Copy Warren Buffett
22 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Warren Buffett is one of the greatest investors of all time. He has also been very generous in sharing the lessons he has learned over his career with...
The Fundamental Principles of Benjamin Graham and Whether They Still Work Today
15 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Graham is considered by many to be the father of value investing. Not only did Graham produce an exceptional track record during his lifetime...
Monopolies, Intangible Assets and the Disruptive Economy with Kai Wu
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our economy is changing. The largest, most successful companies in the world no longer require substantial tangible assets to operate their businesses...
Are Flows Into The S&P 500 And Other Passive Indexes Distorting The Market?
08 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is little disagreement among market observers that passive investing is growing. There is also little dispute that the trend is likely to contin...
Interview: The Birth, Growth & Death of Investing Factors with Adam Butler
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many investors have come to accept the fact that the major factors like value and momentum will produce excess returns over the long-term. But what if...
Why Your Politics Shouldn't Affect Your Investment Portfolio
01 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We all have our political views. We all have a series of policies that we think would make the world a better place than it is today. And in the polar...
The Dangers of Trying to Outsmart the Market
25 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
All of us can fall into the trap of thinking that a certain outcome in investing is obvious. Whether it be the future direction of the market, which a...
Interview: Curating Investing Content and Sharing Knowledge w/ Tadas Viskanta of Abnormal Returns and Ritholtz Wealth Management
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The volume of financial content that is produced these days can be completely overwhelming. Filtering through it to find the best articles is a task t...
Why Growth Investing is Harder Than You Think
18 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Growth investing has seemed easy in the past decade. Growth stocks have easily outpaced both value stocks and the market, which has led to great perfo...
Interview: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Investing and Learning with Nir Kaissar
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Investing in today's world requires an ability to understand multiple disciplines. In addition to understanding markets and having the ability to put ...
Interview: Liquidity Cascades with Corey Hoffstein
11 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It has been said that the most dangerous words in investing are "this time is different". But sometimes a confluence of factors come together to signi...
Why the S&P 500 is an Active Portfolio, and Other Observations on the Stages of Active Management
04 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Active management deserves all the criticism it gets. After all, over 80% of equity managers underperform their benchmarks over the long-term and acti...
Interview: The Past, Present and Future of Investing with Morningstar's John Rekenthaler
27 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Rekenthaler is Vice President of Research for Morningstar, the author of the Rekenthaler Report column, and a leading expert on the mutual fund i...
Bonus Episode: Six Narratives Shaping The Market In 2020
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this bonus episode, we we discuss a presentation Justin recently gave to Fidelity customers about some of the major narratives shaping the current ...
Why the Stock Market is Near All Time Highs Despite the Major Issues in the Economy
20 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are currently in one of the most difficult economic environments many of us will see if our lifetimes. Even though the unemployment rate has fallen...
Is Direct Indexing the Future of Investing?
13 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Technology has allowed all of us to personalize many aspects of our lives. Rather than accept products tailored to a wide range of people, we are now ...
Six Lessons New Robinhood Traders Could Learn From Peter Lynch
06 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Trading volumes at online brokers have skyrocketed since the Coronavirus crisis began. If there is one lesson these newly minted traders have learned ...
Interview: Bridging Academic Research and Real World Investing with Professor Partha Mohanram
30 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we are joined by Professor Partha Mohanram. Professor Mohanram is the John H. Watson Chair in Value Investing at the Rotman School at ...
Four Reasons Value Investing Might Not be Dead Yet
23 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Value investors have fallen on difficult times in the most recent decade. Value's extended underperformance has led many to question whether the strat...
Interview: A Conversation about Buffett, Berkshire & High-Quality Shareholders w/ Professor Lawrence Cunningham
16 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are joined by Lawrence Cunningham. He is a professor at George Washington University and one of the world's leading experts on War...
Have the Fed, Narratives and Passive Flows Broken Fundamental Investing?
09 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Valuing a company (or the market in general) typically involves looking at its price and judging that price relative to its current and projected futu...
Finding Diamonds in the Rough Among Growth Stocks
02 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Buying expensive stocks has historically been a terrible investing strategy. On average, expensive stocks significantly underperform the market as a w...
The Danger of Learning From Your Mistakes
26 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The process of learning from your mistakes is an important part of improving yourself over time both as an investor and as a person. But it requires t...
Active Value Investing in a Changing World with Vitaliy Katsenelson
19 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we are joined by Vitaliy Katsenelson. Vitaliy is the author of the popular Contrarian Edge blog and the CEO of investment firm IMA.&nb...
Is the Price/Book Ratio Dead?
12 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Price/Book ratio has probably been the most important valuation ratio of the past century. If you look at the academic research that supports valu...
Can Warren Buffett Be Quantified?
05 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are going to try something a little different. Our goal at Validea is to capture quantitative strategies that work over the long-t...
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...