Gaining Confidence In Your Confidence

Alpha Theory helps managers streamline the capital allocation process by combining all the investment-process inputs into a model that calculates an optimal size (OPS) for each position. While the primary inputs are quantitative including price targets and probabilities, there is also a qualitative perspective that is just as important to capture.

Alpha Theory helps managers create a Confidence Checklist which contains the more subjective aspects of each manager’s investment process. The individual Checklist items are combined into a Checklist Confidence Score for each security. Formalizing these mental rules and tracking their performance over time creates a feedback loop through which our clients can learn which questions are most important for generating an excess return.

We wanted to investigate if the Checklist Confidence Score was a predictive signal of forward returns. After rigorous analysis of 500,000+ checklist scores, we found a statistically significant signal at the 99% confidence level that showed having a confidence checklist results in positive forward returns. This demonstrates why it is important to explicitly capture and formalize checklists into an investment process.

The Confidence Checklist is a combination of the qualitative, statistical, and fundamental metrics that normally are kept in a manager’s mental model. We think of this mental model as everything that is not clearly captured by the price targets and probabilities. There are infinite possibilities for checklist items, and after more than a decade of helping managers make the most optimal decisions, we are able to help build a meaningful and impactful checklist with our managers to help them find more alpha in their qualitative ideas.

80% of Alpha Theory clients have checklists that are built with customized inputs to fit their process, each of these inputs can take on several values. For example, Management Team could have a drop-down that consists of selections such as Strong, Neutral, and Weak which contribute to the overall confidence score according to the weight applied by the selection.

Each checklist item has a selection, and the total weights combine to create confidence, for example, a final score could be 85%. The confidence checklist score then adjusts the optimal position size and provides the base optimal position before any other factors are applied.

We can see that having a confidence checklist for each position is an important factor in investing. When thinking about how to improve your fund’s performance, think about how your own qualitative checklist contributes to the decision-making process. Is scoring consistent across names? Do you have a way to measure the importance of a checklist item? While you can’t quantify everything, these results prove that adding a little science to the art of investing can improve future returns.
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