This review is a book review of Gary Antonacci’s Dual Momentum Investing book.

The TL;DR: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

So, I honestly have very little criticism of the book beyond the fact that the book sort of insinuates as though equity momentum is the be-all-end-all of investing, which is why I deduct a fraction of a point.

Now, for the book itself: first off, unlike other quantitative trading books I’ve read (aside from Andreas Clenow’s), the book outlines a very simple to follow strategy, to the point that it has already been replicated over at AllocateSmartly. (Side note: I think Walter’s resource at Allocate Smartly is probably the single best one-stop shop for reading up on any tactical asset allocation strategy, as it’s a compendium of many strategies in the risk/return profile of the 7-15% CAGR type strategies, and even has a correlation matrix between them all.)

Regarding the rest of the content, Antonacci does a very thorough job of stepping readers through the history/rationale of momentum, and not just that, but also addressing the alternatives to his strategy.

While the “why momentum works” aspect you can find in this book and others on the subject (I.E. Alpha Architect’s Quantitative Momentum book), I do like the section on other alternative assets. Namely, the book touches upon the fact that commodities no longer trend, so a lot of CTAs are taking it on the chin, and that historically, fixed income has performed much worse from an absolute return than equities. Furthermore, smart beta isn’t (smart), and many of these factors have very low aggregate returns (if they’re significant at all, I believe Wesley Gray at Alpha Architect has a blog post stating that they aren’t). There are a fair amount of footnotes for those interested in corroborating the assertions. Suffice to say, when it comes to strategies that don’t need daily micromanagement, when it comes to how far you can get without leverage (essentially, anything outside the space of volatility trading strategies), equity momentum is about as good as you get.

Antonacci then introduces his readers to his GEM (Global Equities Momentum) strategy, which can be explained in a few sentences: at the end of each month, calculate the total 12-month return of SPY, EAFE, and BIL. If BIL has the highest return, buy AGG for that month, otherwise buy the asset with the highest return. Repeat. That’s literally it, and the performance characteristics, on a risk-adjusted basis, are superior to just about any equity fund tied down to a tiny tracking error. Essentially, the reason for that is that equity markets have bear markets, and a dual momentum strategy lets you preserve your gains instead of giving it back in market corrections (I.E. 2000-2003, 2008, etc.) while keeping pace during the good times.

Lastly, Antonacci provides some ideas for possibly improving on GEM. I may examine on these in the future. However, the low-hanging fruit for improving on this strategy, in my opinion, is to find some other strategies that diversify its drawdowns, and raise its risk-adjusted return profile. Even if the total return goes down, I believe that an interactive brokers account can offer some amount of leverage (either 50% or 100%) to boost the total returns back up, or combine a more diversified portfolio with a volatility strategy.

Lastly, the appendix includes the original dual momentum paper, and a monthly return table for GEM going back to 1974.

All in all, this book is about as accessible and comprehensive as you can get on a solid strategy that readers actually *can* implement themselves in their brokerage account of choice (please use IB or Robinhood because there’s no point paying $8-$10 per trade if you’re retail). That said, I still think that there are venues in which to travel if you’re looking to improve your overall portfolio with GEM as a foundation.

Thanks for reading.

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