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Collider bias: why momentum and value fight inside your screen

In the full universe of stocks, a name's momentum score and its value score are essentially uncorrelated. But among the stocks that pass your screen, which admits a stock if it has high momentum OR cheap valuation, the two scores show a clear negative correlation. A teammate wants to build a model that uses this negative relationship.

Explain why selecting on the screen manufactures a negative correlation between two independent variables, and why building on it is a mistake.

Your answer

This one is open-ended. Work it through, then check your reasoning against the full solution.

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