engineered portfolio

After my post on ex-US stock asset classes, I started to wonder if there are particular specific countries that have attractive stock market.

Finding the historical returns of many different country stock markets would have been a tedious task; but thankfully the team at Credit Suisse does a summary of world equities every year in their annual yearbook!

In this post I’ll summarize the Credit Suisse yearbook and then dive a bit deeper into the returns of 4 different stock markets: the United States, Australia, Sweden, and South Africa.  All the data presented is available to view and analyze yourself, and we encourage you to do that!

Continue reading “Which Country has the Best Stock Market?” →

For a portfolio compromised of mostly stocks and bonds, which asset provides the greatest diversification benefits?

In this post we’ll quantify the diversification benefits that gold, commodities, long term treasuries, and REITs provide to a portfolio of mostly stocks and bonds. Annual data will be reviewed going back to 1972 and daily data is also analyzed going back to mid-2006.

By the end of the post you’ll have a better idea of which alternative asset class to add to your portfolio to help reduce risk. As always, the data reviewed in this post is available to download.

Continue reading “Solving the Great Diversification Debate: Gold, Commodities, Treasuries or REITs” →

How efficient is the bond market?  We’ve found inefficiencies within US sectors, size/style, and international stocks.  Do similar inefficiencies exist in the bond market?

One would belief that fixed income should be easier to accurately predict returns and thus the bond/fixed-income market should be relatively efficient.  In this post we’ll put this assumption to the test.

We’ll go through the annual returns of 11 different bond asset classes (and the S&P 500 and inflation for comparison) to analyze the performance of these bond assets.  This analysis includes a look at the historical data (available to download here), comparison of moving trends, calculate 4 performance and 4 risk metrics, look at the correlation matrix, offer some additional resources and point out some investment opportunities to consider.

Continue reading “Historical Analysis of Bond Investment Returns Performance” →

Are there any international equity asset classes that have historically offered better risk/reward characteristics?  We found in US stocks that midcap value has been a very attractive investment in the long run, are there similar asset classes outside of the US?

Turns out there are two: international (ex-US) small cap stocks, and emerging market stocks.

In this post we’ll compare historical returns data from 1972 through the end of 2016 and highlight these two international stock asset classes that have grossly outperformed their peers.  We’ll look at correlations between these asset classes and US stocks too to see if there are better or worse diversification opportunities.

As always, all data presented is available to download.

Continue reading “Emerging Market and Small Cap Outperformance: Historical Comparison of International Equities” →

Should stock sectors be created equally?  Are there some that consistently outperform and some that consistently underperform?

After my post on the historical performance (and outperformance) of different US stock style boxes I set out to see if a similar phenomena occurs with US stock sectors. Surely the least risky sector won’t also offer the highest performance like what happened with stock style boxes!?  Well it does… and in this post we’ll go through the historical data, look at moving trends, calculate some risk metrics, look at the correlation matrix, offer some additional resources and point out some investment opportunities to consider.

Continue reading “Historical Performance of US Equity Sectors” →

What area of the market offers the best risk-adjusted returns?  Is there a better index to passively invest in and track than the S&P 500?

I’ve always assumed there to be a risk/return relationship between market indexes; but when I began diving a little deeper into the historical data it quickly became apparent that there are certain areas of the market that defy logic and offer higher returns with less risk.

Continue reading “Mid-Cap Value Outperformance: Consistently Beating the S&P 500” →