Aqr Momentum Fund

The weekly performance of IBM stock presented a contestant growth. One highlight of the falling of stock price in the 6th week in the investment period was when IBM presented the 3rd quarter financial report. The investors weren’t satisfied with the profit report which they expected to be better especially when other IT companies were doing well in the 3rd quarter. One mistake I made was that I didn’t follow closely to the financial report of the company; therefore, I missed the peak of the stock price. From this experience, I learned that financial reports and current news are important indicators of the stock price. By following closely to the current event and analyzing the financial report, investors can maximize the profit and also become more familiar to the market.

The retail industry is a highly competitive and mature. For this reason, above-average returns can only be obtained by competitive actions and responses against competitors. Porter five forces model will be used to analysis the development and competition situation in retail industry.

The authors jointly examine momentum and value in eight different markets and asset classes. Asness, Moskowitz and Pederson found two main phenomena associated with returns across 8 various markets and asset classes in their research. These findings challenge previous, well-established theories, like the existence of significant premia in value and momentum return strategies across asset classes and global markets. This innovative research includes some new asset classes not previously used, such as government bonds, currencies, and commodities. The authors look to prove the

Advisors and investors would do well to pay as much attention to the expected volatility of any portfolio or investment as they do to anticipated returns. Moreover, all things being equal, a new investment should only be added to a portfolio when it either reduces the expected risk for a targeted level of returns, or when it boosts expected portfolio returns without adding additional risk, as measured by the expected standard deviation of those returns. Lesson 2: Don’t assume bonds or international stocks offer adequate portfolio diversification. As the world’s financial markets become more closely correlated, bonds and foreign stocks may not provide adequate portfolio diversification. Instead, advisors may want to recommend that suitable investors add modest exposure to nontraditional investments such as hedge funds, private equity and real assets. Such exposure may bolster portfolio returns, while reducing overall risk, depending on how it is structured. Lesson 3: Be disciplined in adhering to asset allocation targets. The long-term benefits of portfolio diversification will only be realized if investors are disciplined in adhering to asset allocation guidelines. For this reason, it is recommended that advisors regularly revisit portfolio allocations and rebalance

“The Benefits of diversification are clear. Portfolio theory has played a crucial role in explaining the relationship between risk and return where more than one investment is held. It also enables us to identify optimal and efficient portfolios.”

In February 1995, Adam Bain, investment advisor in the London, Ontario branch of RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (RBC DS), was considering whether or not to implement a price momentum strategy for his clients. Trend and Cycle, DS’s technical research department, had recently circulated a copy of a study which described a simple price momentum model and referred to its “startling results” based on back testing the strategy over a 15 year period. The Trend and Cycle group had long promoted the importance of price momentum and relative strength to potential clients. Bain needs to determine whether the proposed model was “too good to be true” or, if it did not look promising, how he would go about

d) (2 pts.) Why do we see that the strategy that results is not the strategy that offers both players the best financial

The purpose of this paper is to advise analyze the financial statements of Dillard’s, Inc. in order to recommend whether or not my client should invest $1 million in the large retail company. I will compare the financial statements of Dillard’s, Inc. its competitor, Kohl’s Corporation. Investing in retail can be risky because a retail company’s performance is very heavily influenced by factors that have nothing to do with the actual company such as the overall performance of the economy or the weather during the holiday shopping season. There is, however, potential for profitability within the retail sector. Based on my analysis, I recommend that the client should not invest in Dillard’s, Inc. for the following reasons. First, Dillard’s has experience a decline in net income in the last three years. Second, liquidity ratios indicate that they could face possible liquidity constraints in the future. Third, long-term debt paying ability ratios indicate that the company could have trouble paying off the principal of its current debt obligations. Fourth, the profitability ratios are well below industry averages, suggesting that there are more profitable companies to invest in within the industry. And finally, Investor analysis ratios provide mixed opinion of the future performance of the company. I conclude that retail can be a profitable industry to invest in if an investor has the risk tolerance and risk capacity to withstand the uncertainty, but neither Dillard’s

3.How these strategies are related the performance of these companies over time? Why? What is going on in terms of industry competition and markets that makes one strategy outperform the other at any point in time?

By analyzing monthly returns of all 10 portfolios from 1927-2012 and 2000-2012, we can see that there is a general pattern that stocks with higher momentum have higher return, which confirms the momentum strategy. The average return of stocks with high minus low momentum is a little lower than that

My experience at Villanova, both as a research fellow and a student was formative of my fascination with investments, hedge funds, and mutual funds. My original interest sparked while working with Dr. Velthuis and performing literature reviews on effects of corporate activism on stock prices, and size effects on hedge fund returns. Since then, classes in Portfolio Theory and

Hedge funds are investment vehicles that explicitly pursue absolute returns on their underlying investments. Hedge Fund incorporate to any absolute return fund investing within the financial markets (stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, derivatives, etc) and/or applying non-traditional portfolio management techniques including, but not restricted to, shorting, leveraging, arbitrage, swaps, etc. Hedge funds can invest in any number of strategies. Hedge fund managers typically invest money of their own in the fund they manage, which serves to align their interests with

As indicated by the case study S&P 500 index was use as a measure of the total return for the stock market. Our standard deviation of the total return was used as a one measure of the risk of an individual stock. Also betas for individual stocks are determined by simple linear regression. The variables were: total return for the stock as the dependent variable and independent variable is the total return for the stock. Since the descriptive statistics were a lot, only the necessary data was selected (below table.)

The second theme of recent years is the RBV of the firm, which posits that strategy (and

There are five generic business strategies that companies choose from when trying to successfully compete within their respective industries. This is the first choice a company must make, even before deciding an overall strategy. These generic business strategies include low-cost provider strategy, broad differentiation strategy, best-cost provider strategy; focused strategy based on low costs, and focused strategy based on differentiation. These strategies have many advantages as well as disadvantages. Choosing which one to use depends on what market position a company wants to pursue. Deciding to be more offensive or defensive also plays a role in choosing a