A Growing List of Long-Run Factor Studies

While there exists a well-established (at least a century-old) academic interest in the long-run properties of asset class returns like the U.S. Equity, Fixed Income, Commodity and Real Estate Markets, only during the past decade, has there emerged a branch of literature studying the cross-sectional factors like price momentum and value, as well as other effects like trend and volatility over the long-run. When I started the work on the “Two Centuries of Price Momentum” paper in late 2007, there were barely any papers that looked behind the traditional back-test starting dates, and since then, I could not have imagined a more positive response and growth of interest in the field of long-run historical research, because the insights that come from deep history are truly new and critical to consider for both academic and practical reasons. Any of this was possible only because of the historians[1], nerdy heroes, who tirelessly continued to collect and organize centuries of data. Here is an attempt at a comprehensive list of long-run factor literature today (if I missed your work or if you know of one, please add it into comments):

  1. Accominotti, Olivier and Chambers, 2014, David, Out-of-Sample Evidence on the Returns to Currency Trading, SSRN.

  2. Annaert, Jan, Mensah, Lord, 2014, Cross-sectional predictability of stock returns, evidence from the 19th century Brussels Stock Exchange (1873–1914), Explorations in Economic History, IDEAS

  3. Metrick, Andrew, Schmelzing, Paul, 2021, Banking-Crisis Interventions, 1257 - 2019, SSRN

  4. Arouria, Mohamed, Estay, Christophe, Rault, Christophe, Roubaud, David, 2016, Economic policy uncertainty and stock markets: Long-run evidence from the US, FRL

  5. Baltussen, Guido, Swinkels, Laurens, and Pim van Vliet, 2019, Global Factor Premia, SSRN

  6. Baltussen, Guido, van Vliet, Bart and Pim van Vliet, 2021, The Cross-Section of Stock Returns before 1926, SSRN

  7. Bhardwaj, Janardanan, Rouwenhorst, 2019, The Commodity Futures Risk Premium: 1871 – 2018, SSRN

  8. Blitz, David, 2016, Low-volatility evidence dating back to 1873, WhitePaper Robeco.

  9. Cakici, Zaremba, Bianchi, Pham, 2021, False Discoveries in the Anomaly Research: New Insights from the Stock Exchange of Melbourne (1927-1987), SSRN

  10. Chabot, Benjamin, Ghysels, Eric, and Jagannathan, Ravi, 2009, Price momentum in stocks: insights from Victorian age data, NBER

  11. Dimson, Elroy, Nagel, Stefan, Quigley, Garrett, 2003, Capturing the Value Premium in the United Kingdom, FAJ

  12. Dimson, Elroy, Marsh, Paul, and Staunton, Mike, 2017, Factor-Based Investing: The Long-Term Evidence, JPM

  13. Geczy, Christopher and Samonov, Mikhail, 2016, Two Centuries of Price-Return Momentum, FAJ

  14. Geczy, Christopher and Samonov, Mikhail, 2017, Two Centuries of Multi-Asset Momentum (Equities, Bonds, Currencies, Commodities, Sectors and Stocks), Available at SSRN

  15. Geczy, Christopher and Samonov, Mikhail, 2017, Two Centuries of Multi-Asset Value and Momentum, Knowledge @ Wharton

  16. Geczy, Christopher and Samonov, Mikhail, 2019, Two Centuries of Commodity Futures Premia: Value, Momentum and Basis, SSRN.

  17. Goetzmann, William N. and Huang, Simon, 2018, Momentum in Imperial Russia. Journal of Financial Economics, Forthcoming, SSRN

  18. Golez, Benjamin, Koudijs, Peter, 2017, Four Centuries of Return Predictability, SSRN

  19. Gompes, Paul and Lerner, Josh, 2001, The Really Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings: The Pre-Nasdaq Evidence. JOF

  20. Greyserman, Alex and Kaminski, Kathryn, 2014, Trend Following with Managed Futures: The Search for Crisis Alpha, Wiley

  21. Hanna, Alan, Turner, John, Walker, Clive, 2017, News Media and Investor Sentiment over the Long Run. SSRN

  22. Hurst, Brian, Ooi, Yao Hua, and Pedersen, Lasse H., 2012, A century of evidence on trend-following, investing, AQR

  23. Ilmanen, Israel, Moskowitz, Thapar, Wang, 2019, Factor Premia and Factor Timing: A Century of Evidence, SSRN

  24. Jacobsen, Ben, Zhang, Cherry Yi, 2018, The Halloween Indicator, 'Sell in May and Go Away': Everywhere and All the Time, SSRN

  25. Jones, Charles, 2002, ‘A Century of Stock Market Liquidity and Trading Costs’, SSRN

  26. Lempérière, Yves, Deremble, Cyril, Seager, Philip Andrew, Potters, Marc, and Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe, 2014, Two centuries of trend following, IDEAS

  27. McQuarrie Edward, 2021, Extending the Barcap Back to 1900: Introducing a New Total Bond Index, SSRN

  28. Odlyzko, Andrew, 2017, Novel market inefficiencies from early Victorian times, FHR

  29. Samonov, Mikhail, 2020, Two Centuries of Value and Momentum, Value Investing: Deeper History, and Value Crashes: Deep History, Two Centuries Blog

  30. Szakmary, Andrew C. and Zhou, Xiwen, 2013, Industry momentum in an earlier time: Evidence from Cowles data, Wiley

  31. Trigilia, Giulio and Wang, Pingle, 2019, Momentum, Echo and Predictability: Evidence from the London Stock Exchange (1820-1930), SSRN

  32. Urquhart, Andrew, McGroarty, Frank, 2014, Calendar effects, market conditions and the Adaptive Market Hypothesis: Evidence from long-run U.S. data, IRFA

  33. van Vliet, Pim, and Baltussen, Guido, 2020, Equity styles and the Spanish flu, SSRN

  34. Wahal, Sunil, The Profitability and Investment Premium: Pre-1963 Evidence (March 20, 2018). Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Forthcoming. SSRN

  35. Zaremba, Adam, Bianchi, Robert, Mikutowski Mateusz, 2019, Long-Run Reversal in Commodity Returns: Insights from Seven Centuries of Evidence, SSRN

  36. Zaremba, Adam, Karathanasopoulos Andreas, Long, Huaigang, 2019, Short-Term Momentum (Almost) Everywhere, SSRN

  37. Zaremba, Kizys, Raza, 2019, The Long-Run Reversal in the Long Run: Insights from Two Centuries of International Equity Returns, SSRN

PS. I am periodically updating this list in attempt to keep it current, so feel free to bookmark and come back to see the latest additions.


[1] For example, U.S. Equity market indices have been constructed and extended by the following sample of academics: Mitchell (1910), Smith and Cole (1928), Macaulay (1938), Cowles (1939), Fisher and Lorie (1960), Schwert (1990), Siegel (1992), Shiller (2000), Goetzmann, Ibbotson and Peng (2001), Sylla, Wilson and Wright (2006).