Biography
Joachim Klement, CFA, is a trustee of the CFA Institute Research Foundation and offers regular commentary at Klement on Investing. Previously, he was CIO at Wellershoff & Partners Ltd., and before that, head of the UBS Wealth Management Strategic Research team and head of equity strategy for UBS Wealth Management. Klement studied mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, and Madrid, Spain, and graduated with a master’s degree in mathematics. In addition, he holds a master’s degree in economics and finance.
One of the symptoms of middle age is that you start to give advice to younger people on what your experience has taught you about life. So Joachim Klement, CFA, puts his imaginary pipe into his mouth, adjusts his glasses, and explains why keeping it simple might be the most important "dumb alpha" lesson he has learned in his investing career.
Instead of being motivated by the rule “Don’t just sit there, do something,” investors might instead act based on the rule “Don’t just do something, sit there,” says Joachim Klement, CFA, in the latest edition of his Dumb Alpha series.
Instead of creating complex multilinear factor regressions, investors can outperform the market simply by selecting the stocks with the smoothest return profile — good, old, boring stocks that show no drama and a lot of stability, writes Joachim Klement, CFA.
In the spirit of dumb alpha, we can say that simple trailing P/E ratios are far better value indicators than forward P/E ratios. Or as I tell my colleagues at work: Never ever use forward P/E ratios. Ever.
Historically the CAPE ratio has worked well in predicting the future real returns of stock markets. But recently the earnings side of the CAPE ratio has come under increased scrutiny.
Joachim Klement, CFA, demonstrates a method for beating average hedge fund returns — without the fees. It's the best dumb alpha can offer: a simple, low-cost investment strategy that outperforms more sophisticated and expensive alternatives.
If the sell-in-May effect holds true, investors can outperform a simple buy-and-hold strategy by selling stocks at the beginning of May and buying them back at the beginning of November. But does the so-called Halloween indicator actually work?
Carry trades profit from investor herding just like momentum strategies. As more and more investors pour money into high-interest currencies and borrow on low-interest currencies, the demand for the former rises. This herding behavior can continue for quite some time, but it comes to a halt when investors are no longer willing to invest in high-interest currencies.
Momentum investing can seem like an insult to your intelligence. Why should prices go up just because they have gone up in the past? But there is plenty of evidence that momentum investing works in the medium term.
With short-term forecasts, random walks tend to outperform the accumulated wisdom of professional forecasters. That estimation uncertainty is not reduced for long-term forecasts either, because mean reversion cannot overcome the effects of compound interest. Luckily, there is a range of techniques, from simple to sophisticated, that can help long-term investors with this challenge.