Capturing Mean Reversion Via Momentum

Ben from A Wealth of Common Sense recently posted an update of his "favorite chart", which stacks the calendar year performance of a variety of asset classes.

As Ben points out:

There’s little rhyme or reason for how these things play out from year-to-year so it provides a good reminder for investors to understand that any single year’s performance in the markets is fairly meaningless.

While the year to year performance is rather random, this post will weigh the benefit of mean reversion (allocating to risk assets that have underperformed and stack low on the quilt) vs momentum (allocating to risk assets that have worked well and rank high on the quilt).


Asset Class Performance Over Longer Time Frames

The chart below shows the same asset classes that Ben highlighted, but rather than rank the asset classes by calendar year performance, it ranks them by rolling five year returns as of the end of February for each year (I picked end of February simply because that was the last data point).

There is a lot of interesting information here. One of the more interesting aspects is how mean reversion AND momentum can be seen over various time frames. Asset classes appear to be mean-reverting over longer periods (note the strong relative performance of US equities at the beginning of the 2000's, the poor relative performance through the mid to late 2000's, and the strong relative performance we are currently experiencing - while EM and international stocks were the opposite) and asset classes that have done well continue to do well (momentum) over shorter periods (note that if something did well the previous five years, it tended to stick around in the years to follow).


Allocating by Mean Reversion and Momentum

Using the February 1997 data as a starting point, we can look at the performance over several different time frames to determine whether mean reversion or momentum makes more sense. In this example I narrowed the universe down to equity-like holdings (US - small, mid, large-, International, EM, and REITs) as I personally don't necessarily believe commodities, cash, or even bonds should always be long-term strategic investment holdings (a conversation for another day).

Five year allocation: In this example, an allocation to the worst two performing asset classes over the last 5 years (mean reversion) and the best two performing asset classes (momentum) are held for the next five years. There is a HUGE caveat in this analysis as since 1997 there have been only 3 periods of rebalancing (so take the exact results with a grain of salt, though this has been verified in past research performed by Meb Faber).

	Mean Reversion	Momentum
2002-2007	21.10%	10.81%
2007-2012	1.80%	2.30%
2012-2017	8.67%	6.80%
Geometric Return	10.24%	6.58%

One year allocation: The reason I didn't bother to build out the five year allocation analysis further (to remove the issue outlined above) is that it doesn't really matter once you see the shorter-term results. In this example, we allocated to the bottom two / top two performing asset classes from the previous five years, but held on for the following 12-months (more data points than above, but we'll have a lot more below).

	Mean Reversion	Momentum
2003	-15.3%	-19.9%
2004	64.5%	50.9%
2005	13.3%	21.0%
2006	13.9%	21.3%
2007	16.9%	23.5%
2008	-8.1%	4.4%
2009	-43.0%	-53.0%
2010	76.9%	73.7%
2011	30.8%	26.2%
2012	-1.1%	1.4%
2013	15.2%	7.8%
2014	7.0%	18.7%
2015	2.9%	17.1%
2016	-19.0%	-7.8%
2017	23.1%	22.0%
Geometric Return	8.0%	9.7%

Monthly allocation: In this case we allocated to the bottom two / top two performing asset classes from the previous five years, but held on for the following one month (performance is shown for the 12-months ending February of each year).

	Mean Reversion	Momentum
2003	-15.2%	-14.7%
2004	48.7%	57.4%
2005	13.2%	12.3%
2006	13.9%	34.9%
2007	14.1%	23.9%
2008	-8.2%	5.4%
2009	-42.1%	-56.1%
2010	78.8%	73.1%
2011	35.5%	24.4%
2012	-1.2%	1.6%
2013	17.4%	5.7%
2014	4.4%	24.3%
2015	3.0%	13.8%
2016	-18.9%	-9.8%
2017	23.2%	23.6%
Geometric Return	7.5%	10.1%

Mean Reversion Captured via Momentum

Asset classes mean revert over longer periods, but this analysis provides a good starting point for the hypothesis that it can can be captured more effectively through momentum than by allocating to a down-an-out area of the market. The chart below shows that the best performing asset class was emerging markets for an extended period roughly 5 years after being the worst ranked asset class in 2002, REITs in 2012 were the best after being the worst ranked asset class during the financial crisis, and US stocks more recently were the best after ranking poorly for much of the period following the financial crisis.

For an investor the takeaway is good news... rather having to allocate to an underperforming asset class over the past x years, simply wait for that underperforming / cheap asset class to start performing well. While you may miss the exact turn, you may be able to capture the longer run success when the asset class starts working without having to deal with the pain that created the opportunity.