Insights

The Maintenance Margin Ratio (MMR) is an important indicator used in financial markets to assess the risk conditions of margin accounts and to determine whether investors are approaching the threshold for a broker’s margin call. The purpose is to reduce the risk of investors being unable to repay their loans during periods of high market volatility. It is worth noting that the MMR provided by TEJ is calculated based on all margin accounts for each stock, reflecting the overall average risk exposure of the market.

This study employs TEJ’s Point-in-Time Audited Financial Database to construct a composite factor for stock selection in Taiwan’s equity market. By preserving financial data exactly as available at each historical moment, the framework avoids look-ahead bias and ensures empirical reliability. We find that higher-ranked portfolios deliver significant short-term excess returns, while predictive power weakens over longer horizons. The results highlight the practical value of Point-in-Time financial data for quantitative factor investing and underscore its role in building replicable, data-driven investment strategies.

In TQuant backtesting and live trading, order functions serve as the central link between strategy logic and capital management. Choosing the right order method not only makes the code cleaner and easier to read but also improves the efficiency of risk control and portfolio rebalancing. TQuant provides order functions across three dimensions — share quantity, capital amount, and portfolio weight. For each dimension, there are two variants: a basic order and a target order. In total, this gives us six order placement methods. In the following sections, we will explain the features, parameters, and recommended applications of each.

TEJ PIT Audited Financial Database eliminates look-ahead and survivorship bias with Point-in-Time data, full version retention, IFRS alignment, and 300+ ready-to-use ratios—delivering reliable backtesting and faster strategy development.

In financial markets, Contrary Thinking is a timeless strategic wisdom. It stems from a simple yet profound observation: when most people are overly optimistic, the market is often overheated; when the crowd falls into fear, it may actually present a buying opportunity. However, contrarian investing has long remained at the level of a proverb, lacking concrete and quantifiable standards of action, making it difficult to implement in practice.

Gabriel Watson  is a well-known American growth-momentum portfolio manager. In his early career, he worked at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and William O’Neil & Co., where he accumulated extensive market research experience. Since joining Black Rose Capital Management in 1998, Watson has broken away from the confines of traditional value investing and developed a systematic, rule-based stock-picking method centered on “revenue momentum and price strength.” He calls this framework “The Machine.” In an environment characterized by rapid information flow and swift capital rotation, this approach has enabled him to capture the powerful upward moves of leading stocks.

Should you invest in emerging markets? Our emerging market investment guide covers the benefits, risks, and strategies to empower you with data-based decisions.

Alpha signals are metrics that show portfolio outperformance potential. Learn how they're generated and applied in trading, and the challenges of using them.

Factor investing targets quantifiable characteristics to improve returns. Explores common factors (macroeconomic and style types) and strategies in our guide.

In our previous article" Shipping Leads, Semiconductors Follow? "we identified a recurring pattern in Taiwan’s market: rallies in the shipping sector often precede gains in semiconductor stocks. This article builds on that insight by transforming the observed rotation sequence into a quantitative investment strategy.