Analysis
Alfred Cowles in a study in Econometrica in 1934 showed that trading based upon the editorial advice would have resulted in earning less than a buy-and-hold strategy using a well diversified portfolio. Cowles concluded that a buy-and-hold strategy produced 15.5% annualized returns from 1902–1929 while the Dow theory strategy produced annualized returns of 12%.
After numerous studies supported Cowles over the following years, many academics stopped studying Dow theory believing Cowles's results were conclusive. In recent years however, Cowles' conclusions have been revisited. William Goetzmann, Stephen Brown, and Alok Kumar believe that Cowles' study was incomplete and that Dow theory produces excess risk-adjusted returns. Specifically, the return of a buy-and-hold strategy was higher than that of a Dow theory portfolio by 2%, but the riskiness and volatility of the Dow theory portfolio was lower, so that the Dow theory portfolio produced higher risk-adjusted returns according to their study.
On the 160th anniversary of Charles Dow's Birthday, Jack Schannep of TheDowTheory.com, delivered a speech to the Market Technicians Association, describing recent contributions to the Evolution of the Dow Theory and showed that traditional Dow Theory gives a total annualized return, from 1953 until 2011, about 1.5% per year greater than Buy and Hold.
Many technical analysts consider Dow Theory's definition of a trend and its insistence on studying price action as the main premises of modern technical analysis.
Read more about this topic: Dow Theory
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)