Robert Z. Aliber is Professor of International Economics and Finance at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
His research activities include: the international financial system; exchange rate issues; international money, capital markets and capital flows; the multinational firm; international banking; public policy issues.
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All propositions about rates of return in financial markets are clich s .
Market literature is full of rules about achieving above average returns. These rules are clich s rather than eternal truths. No scientific proposition about beating the market beats the market for an extended period.
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Financial markets are mean- reverting .
Prices in financial markets always tend to move back toward equilibrium values when they are not moving away from these equilibrium values.
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Currency markets overshoot and undershoot and equity markets overshoot and undershoot.
There are observable trend values in both the currency markets and the stock markets. The variations around these trends (overshooting and undershooting) reflect the variability of cross border flows of capital in the foreign exchange markets and changes in investor optimism and pessimism in the stock markets.
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Buy and hold strategies generally are less rewarding than trading strategies.
The clich that "markets can't be timed" may be right for some investors all of the time, and for all investors some of the time, but there are times when market prices are far above or far below their long run equilibrium prices.
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Watch the capital flows in and out of countries .
An increase in the inflow of capital to a country is likely to be associated with an increase in the foreign exchange value of its currency and an increase in prices of stocks of firms headquartered in the country.
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An increase in the inflation rate in a country is likely to be associated with a depreciation of its currency.
It is also likely to lead to a decrease in prices of stocks of domestic firms.
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The smaller the country, the larger the impact of capital flows on currency values and stock prices.
Because of the positive correlation between changes in currency values and changes in stock prices, global investing is much more opportunistic than domestic investing.
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Many firms have 'fifteen minutes of fame'.
Few of the 'Nifty Fifty' firms that that were the market favorites in the 1960s are market leaders today.
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The national location of the low cost center of production of particular products shifts among countries.
So does the national identity of the most profitable firms in an industry when viewed in a global context.
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The size of the investor's domestic market matters.
The strength of the case for global investing by the residents of each country is inversely related to the size of the domestic market and the growth rate for new companies. Investors resident in relatively small countries have a much stronger need to diversify internationally than investors resident in larger countries.
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U.S. investors may not need to invest internationally as much as investors from other countries.
The share of rapid growth companies headquartered in the United States is disproportionately large relative to the U.S. share of global GDP.
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Currency hedging is not useful for all.
The cost of hedging the foreign exchange exposure is likely to be positive for currencies with a tendency to depreciate and negative for currencies with a tendency to appreciate.
