Investing With a Conscience, but Done by a Robot By DAVID GELLES It’s called ESG investing, for environmental, social and governance factors, and firms are feeding this data to an algorithm to decide where to invest.

Ten days before Christmas, Jerry Feng got the bad news. His company, Shenzhen Bojulong Display Technology, was wrapping up a terrific 2015. His factory was one of hundreds in China cranking out no-name versions of the two-wheeled devices Western culture has adopted as “hoverboards.” Shenzhen Bojulong produced as many as 2,000 a day, selling them … More Inside the Copycat Factories of China

When Jeff Bezos founded an online bookstore in 1994, no one could have guessed that in less than 15 years, Amazon would fundamentally reshape the U.S. retail landscape. No one, that is, except Bezos himself: As Brad Stone’s book about Amazon, “The Everything Store,” makes clear, Bezos’s goal from the start was to change the … More Set of Characteristics to Identify Which Companies will Succeed

Much has happened in the world since the original publication of this white paper in 2006. However, change has always been the constant, and indeed has anything new really been seen in our world of investing? Bubbles, defaults, government interventions, bear markets, downgrades, quantitative easing, fortunes made and lost – they’ve all happened before. (For … More A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation

After a rough start to the new year, a lot of investors might be tempted to buy into “fallen angel” companies at or near all-time lows. They’re not hard to find. In the tech sector, GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO) and Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), two profitable and recently public companies, have taken major hits. GoPro is down 90 percent … More 40% of all stocks have suffered a permanent 70 percent plus decline from their peak value

Which investment would you prefer to invest in to diversify your existing stock allocation? Asset A with an expected: 3% annualized return 3.5% annualized standard deviation 0.00 correlation with your existing investment Asset B with an expected: -5% annualized return > 50% annualized standard deviation 0.00 correlation with your existing investment Easy question right? Perhaps not. … More The Case For High Volatility Strategies

  Consider the following market timing strategy, which we’ll call “daily momentum”: (1) If the market’s total return for the day, measured from yesterday’s close to today’s close, is positive, then  the market at today’s close and hold for one day. (2) If the market’s total return for the day, measured from yesterday’s close to … More Financial Backtesting: A Cautionary Tale

The fact can no longer be avoided: You are your phone. The pattern of smartphone use is the pattern of the self. This is who you are: The Wall Street Journal reports today that Silicon Valley lending startups are looking to base personal loan decisions on analyses of data from individuals’ phones. The apps running … More You Are Your Phone

I used to loathe hangovers. I used to keep my bedside table stacked with bananas, Pedialyte, do-­it-­yourself guides to bootleg saline. Home from nights out, I used to dis- and replace fluids with the verve of an undertaker. I tried every which way to delay the inevitable. Still I woke up hung over, of course. … More Letter of Recommendation: Hangovers