The Bid & Ask

Quotations, Dispatches, and the Daily Tape

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Rejected thesis

PEAD × sector tailwind (combination)

The result

Thesis (rejected as combination): PEAD edge should amplify when the name's sector ETF has been a top-decile performer over 6 months (stacked catalyst + macro signal).

Code: research/pead_sector_tailwind.py Report: research/pead_sector_tailwind_report.json (n=597 PEAD events stratified by sector momentum)

Why it didn't help: PEAD edge is invariant to sector context. 20-day forward returns:

Bucket n 20d mean Hit
all PEAD events 597 +5.4 % 60 %
sector top quartile 136 +5.8 % 63 %
sector top half 269 +5.5 % 60 %
sector bottom half 328 +5.3 % 61 %
sector bottom quartile 175 +6.1 % 63 %

Top-quartile-sector minus bottom-quartile-sector spread at 20 d: -0.3 pp. Essentially zero. PEAD's catalyst signal is strong enough that it doesn't need (and is not amplified by) macro context.

Verdict: Don't bother layering sector momentum onto PEAD.


At a glance
Sample597
Validatorresearch/pead_sector_tailwind.py
VerdictRejected

Every result here is reproducible from the script named above. Reports are in the repository.

Other rejected theses