Mall Vs Strip Divergence
In plain terms
An internal (not academically-cited) bet that the post-pandemic split between enclosed-mall REITs and strip-center REITs in real-world store visits keeps going: when one group's year-over-year foot-traffic growth pulls clearly ahead of the other (by 10 or 15 percentage points on a 13-week smoothed basis), buy the winning group's REITs and short the lagging group's for the next one to three months.
How it works
Internally-motivated heuristic (NOT paper-backed). Mall REITs (SPG, MAC) and strip-center REITs (REG, KIM, BRX, FRT) diverged structurally in physical foot traffic post-pandemic (destination-mall decline vs convenience strip-center resilience). The thesis is rotation-continuation: when one cohort's smoothed YoY visit growth pulls persistently ahead of the other, that operational lead is hypothesized to persist into forward equity performance. The previously cited Ling-Wang-Zhou (2020) JRER COVID-REIT paper does NOT support this construct (it is a contemporaneous daily GeoCOVID abnormal-return study with no foot-traffic, no smoothing, no rotation rule), so the citation has been removed rather than dressed up; no substitute paper establishing this exact signal was found.
Data dependencies
- Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.
- Safegraph visits
A data feed this strategy reads, refreshed on its normal schedule.
Expected edge
- Tested over
- T+8d to T+63d
+/-2-4% over 21-63d on REIT cohort rotation (LWZ 2020 framework).
Example tickers where this is likely to fire
Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.
Related families
When SafeGraph's 13-week smoothed foot-traffic YoY for a retailer breaks above +5% or below -5%, the next earnings report is likely to surprise in that direction. Go long winners, short laggards, hold through earnings.
SafeGraph foot-traffic accelerates → retailer's next earnings beats.
Compare the stock to its sector peers on 12-month return (excluding last month). If it's in the top third of peers, go long.
Explore Mall Vs Strip Divergence on alphactor.ai
See which tickers this family is currently firing on, with live signals and rankings.