Tactical allocation in commodity futures markets: Combining momentum and term structure signals

This paper examines the combined role of momentum and term structure signals for the design of profitable trading strategies in commodity futures markets. With significant annualized alphas of 10.14% and 12.66%, respectively, the momentum and term structure strategies appear profitable when implemented individually. With an abnormal return of 21.02%, our double-sort strategy that exploits both momentum and term structure signals clearly outperforms the single-sort strategies. This double-sort strategy can additionally be utilized as a portfolio diversification tool. The abnormal performance of the combined portfolios cannot be explained by a lack of liquidity, data mining or transaction costs.     

The role of shorting,firm size,and time on market anomalies

We examine the role of shorting, firm size, and time on the profitability of size, value, and momentum strategies. We find that long positions make up almost all of size, 60% of value, and half of momentum profits. Shorting becomes less important for momentum and more important for value as firm size decreases. The value premium decreases with firm size and is weak among the largest stocks. Momentum profits, however, exhibit no reliable relation with size. These effects are robust over 86 years of US equity data and almost 40 years of data across four international equity markets and five asset classes. Variation over time and across markets of these effects is consistent with random chance. We find little evidence that size, value, and momentum returns are significantly affected by changes in trading costs or institutional and hedge fund ownership over time.     

Trend-following trading strategies in commodity futures: A re-examination

This paper examines the performance of trend-following trading strategies in commodity futures markets using a monthly dataset spanning 48 years and 28 markets. We find that all parameterizations of the dual moving average crossover and channel strategies that we implement yield positive mean excess returns net of transactions costs in at least 22 of the 28 markets. When we pool our results across markets, we show that all of the trading rules earn hugely significant positive returns that prevail over most subperiods of the data as well. These results are robust with respect to the set of commodities the trading rules are implemented with, distributional assumptions, data-mining adjustments and transactions costs, and help resolve divergent evidence in the extant literature regarding the performance of momentum and pure trend-following strategies that is otherwise difficult to explain.     

Testing the growth option theory: the profitability of enhanced momentum strategies in Australia

Recent literature relates growth option theory to various return regularities. Sagi and Seasholes (2007) (S&S) develop a model that explains momentum profitability using growth option theory. We test the model’s predictions in the Australian market by examining three momentum strategies. Two of these strategies examine the profitability of momentum strategies conditioned on stocks characteristics, whereas the third conditions on previous market returns. Our results are largely supportive of the S&S model. As predicted by S&S, the two strategies that use firm‐specific characteristics yield a higher profit than a simple momentum strategy. The third strategy that conditions on the previous market return also leads to differences in momentum profitability between bull and bear markets, but these differences are small and largely insignificant.     

Currency momentum strategies

We provide a broad empirical investigation of momentum strategies in the foreign exchange market. We find a significant cross-sectional spread in excess returns of up to 10% per annum (p.a.) between past winner and loser currencies. This spread in excess returns is not explained by traditional risk factors, it is partially explained by transaction costs and shows behavior consistent with investor under- and overreaction. Moreover, cross-sectional currency momentum has very different properties from the widely studied carry trade and is not highly correlated with returns of benchmark technical trading rules. However, there seem to be very effective limits to arbitrage that prevent momentum returns from being easily exploitable in currency markets.     

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF USING REALIZED VOLATILITY IN FORECASTING FUTURE IMPLIED VOLATILITY

We examine the economic benefits of using realized volatility to forecast future implied volatility for pricing, trading, and hedging in the S&P 500 index options market. We propose an encompassing regression approach to forecast future implied volatility, and hence future option prices, by combining historical realized volatility and current implied volatility. Although the use of realized volatility results in superior performance in the encompassing regressions and out-of-sample option pricing tests, we do not find any significant economic gains in option trading and hedging strategies in the presence of transaction costs.     

The Post‐Cost Profitability of Momentum Trading Strategies: Further Evidence from the UK

This paper examines the post‐cost profitability of momentum trading strategies in the UK over the period 1988–2003 and provides direct evidence on stock concentration, turnover and trading cost associated with the strategy. We find that after factoring out transaction costs the profitability of the momentum strategy disappears for shorter horizons but remains for longer horizons. Indeed, for ranking and holding periods up to 6‐months, profitable momentum returns would not be available to most average investors as the cost of implementation outweighs the possible returns. However, we find post‐cost profitability for ranking and/or holding periods beyond 6 months as portfolio turnover and its associated cost reduces. We find similar results for a sub‐sample of relatively large and liquid stocks.     

Are Momentum Profits Robust to Trading Costs?

We test whether momentum strategies remain profitable after considering market frictions induced by trading. Intraday data are used to estimate alternative measures of proportional and non-proportional (price impact) trading costs. The price impact models imply that abnormal returns to portfolio strategies decline with portfolio size. We calculate break-even fund sizes that lead to zero abnormal returns. In addition to equal- and value-weighted momentum strategies, we derive a liquidity-weighted strategy designed to reduce the cost of trades. Equal-weighted strategies perform the best before trading costs and the worst after trading costs. Liquidity-weighted and hybrid liquidity/value-weighted strategies have the largest break-even fund sizes: $5 billion or more (relative to December 1999 market capitalization) may be invested in these momentum strategies before the apparent profit opportunities vanish.     

Slow diffusion of information and price momentum in stocks: Evidence from options markets

This paper investigates the source of price momentum in the stock market using information from options markets. We provide direct evidence of the gradual information diffusion model in Hong and Stein (1999): momentum profits are larger for stocks whose information diffuses slowly into the stock market. We exploit the options markets to identify stocks with slow information diffusion speed. As informed traders trade options to realize the information that has not been fully incorporated in the stock price, we are able to enhance the momentum strategy by selecting winner/loser stocks with high growth/large drop in call option implied volatility. Our empirical strategy generates a risk-adjusted alpha of 1.8% per month over the 1996–2011 period, during which the simple momentum strategy fails to perform. The results are robust to the impact of earnings announcement, transaction costs, industry concentration, and choice of options’ moneyness and time-to-maturity. Finally, our finding is not driven by existing stock- or option-related characteristics that are known to improve momentum.     

Do option markets undo restrictions on short sales? Evidence from the 2008 short-sale ban

The effectiveness of any sanction depends on the costs of avoiding its restrictions. We examine whether bearish option strategies were substitutes for short sales during the September 2008 short-sale ban. We find a significant diminution in option volumes and a significant increase in option bid-ask spreads for banned stock relative to unbanned stock during the ban period. Apparent violations of the put-call parity bound became significantly more frequent for banned stocks during the ban period. We conclude that the ban acted as an effective restriction on trading in options.     

Stock options and managerial incentives for risk taking: Evidence from FAS 123R

We provide new evidence on the relation between option-based compensation and risk-taking behavior by exploiting the change in the accounting treatment of stock options following the adoption of FAS 123R in 2005. The implementation of FAS 123R represents an exogenous change in the accounting benefits of stock options that has no effect on the economic costs and benefits of options for providing managerial incentives. Our results do not support the view that the convexity inherent in option-based compensation is used to reduce risk-related agency problems between managers and shareholders. We show that all firms dramatically reduce their usage of stock options (convexity) after the adoption of FAS 123R and that the decline in option use is strongly associated with a proxy for accounting costs. Little evidence exists that the decline in option usage following the accounting change results in less risky investment and financial policies.     

The 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets

We study the 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets proposed by George and Hwang [George, T., Hwang, C.Y., 2004. The 52-week high and momentum investing. Journal of Finance 59, 2145-2176.]. This strategy produces profits in 18 of the 20 markets studied, and the profits are significant in 10 markets. The 52-week high momentum profits exist independently from the Jegadeesh and Titman [Jegadeesh, N., Titman, S., 1993. Returns to buying winners and selling losers: implications for market efficiency. Journal of Finance 48, 65-91.] individual stock and Moskowitz and Grinblatt [Moskowitz, T.J., Grinblatt, M., 1999. Do industries explain momentum? Journal of Finance 54, 1249-1290] industry momentum strategies. These profits do not show reversals in the long run. We find that the 52-week high is a better predictor of future returns than macroeconomic risk factors or the acquisition price. The individualism index, a proxy to the level of overconfidence, has no explanatory power to the variations of the 52-week high momentum profits across different markets. However, the profits are no longer significant in most markets once transaction costs are taken into account.     

Discrete hedging of American-type options using local risk minimization

Local risk minimization and total risk minimization discrete hedging have been extensively studied for European options [e.g., Schweizer, M., 1995. Variance-optimal hedging in discrete time. Mathematics of Operation Research 20, 1–32; Schweizer, M., 2001. A guided tour through quadratic hedging approaches. In: Jouini, E., Cvitanic, J., Musiela, M., Option pricing, interest rates and risk management, Cambridge University Press, pp. 538–574]. In practice, hedging of options with American features is more relevant. For example, equity linked variable annuities provide surrender benefits which are essentially embedded American options. In this paper we generalize both quadratic and piecewise linear local risk minimization hedging frameworks to American options. We illustrate that local risk minimization methods outperform delta hedging when the market is highly incomplete. In addition, compared to European options, distributions of the hedging costs are typically more skewed and heavy-tailed. Moreover, in contrast to quadratic local risk minimization, piecewise linear risk minimization hedging strategies can be significantly different, resulting in larger probabilities of small costs but also larger extreme cost.     

Informed trading,information uncertainty,and price momentum

In this paper we investigate the effects of informed trading (PIN) and information uncertainty in determining price momentum. We find that trading strategies based on buying high-uncertainty good-news stocks and shorting high-uncertainty bad-news stocks work well when limited to high-PIN stocks, while stocks with low-PIN do not exhibit price continuations, even when the uncertainty level of those stocks is high. In contrast, momentum returns are always significant for high-PIN stocks, irrespective of information uncertainty. Overall, we show that the informed trading effect is both independent of and stronger than that of information uncertainty in determining price momentum.     

O/S: The relative trading activity in options and stock

Relatively little is known about the trading volume in derivatives relative to the volume in underlying stocks. We study the time-series properties and the determinants of the options/stock trading volume ratio (O/S) using a comprehensive cross-section and time-series of data on equities and their listed options. O/S is related to many intuitive determinants such as delta and trading costs, and it also varies with institutional holdings, analyst following, and analyst forecast dispersion. O/S is higher around earnings announcements, suggesting increased trading in the options market. Further, post-announcement absolute returns are positively related to pre-announcement O/S, which suggests that at least part of the pre-announcement options trading is informed.     

Momentum strategies based on reward–risk stock selection criteria

In this paper, we analyze momentum strategies that are based on reward–risk stock selection criteria in contrast to ordinary momentum strategies based on a cumulative return criterion. Reward–risk stock selection criteria include the standard Sharpe ratio with variance as a risk measure, and alternative reward–risk ratios with the expected shortfall as a risk measure. We investigate momentum strategies using 517 stocks in the S&P 500 universe in the period 1996–2003. Although the cumulative return criterion provides the highest average monthly momentum profits of 1.3% compared to the monthly profit of 0.86% for the best alternative criterion, the alternative ratios provide better risk-adjusted returns measured on an independent risk-adjusted performance measure. We also provide evidence on unique distributional properties of extreme momentum portfolios analyzed within the framework of general non-normal stable Paretian distributions. Specifically, for every stock selection criterion, loser portfolios have the lowest tail index and tail index of winner portfolios is lower than that of middle deciles. The lower tail index is associated with a lower mean strategy. The lowest tail index is obtained for the cumulative return strategy. Given our data-set, these findings indicate that the cumulative return strategy obtains higher profits with the acceptance of higher tail risk, while strategies based on reward–risk criteria obtain better risk-adjusted performance with the acceptance of the lower tail risk.     

Residual momentum

Conventional momentum strategies exhibit substantial time-varying exposures to the Fama and French factors. We show that these exposures can be reduced by ranking stocks on residual stock returns instead of total returns. As a consequence, residual momentum earns risk-adjusted profits that are about twice as large as those associated with total return momentum; is more consistent over time; and less concentrated in the extremes of the cross-section of stocks. Our results are inconsistent with the notion that the momentum phenomenon can be attributed to a priced risk factor or market microstructure effects.     

Dividends,Corporate Monitors and Agency Costs

We report new evidence on the hypothesis that dividends reduce agency costs. Consistent with dividends as a mechanism to reduce agency costs, we find that, on average, firms with a majority of strict outside directors on their boards experience significantly lower mean abnormal returns around the announcements of sizeable dividend increases. Our results are robust to multivariate controls for firm size, leverage, ownership, growth options, and change in dividend yield. However, we find no evidence that dividend increases reduce agency costs as measured by poison pills or outside blockholdings.     

Pricing innovations in consumption growth: A re-evaluation of the recursive utility model

We re-evaluate the cross-sectional asset pricing implications of the recursive utility function of  and , using innovations in future consumption growth in our tests. Our empirical specification helps explain the size, value and momentum effects. Specifically, we find that (?) the beta associated with news about consumption growth has a systematic pattern: beta decreases along the size dimension and increases along the book-to-market and momentum dimensions, (??) innovation in consumption growth is significantly priced in asset returns using both the Fama and MacBeth (1973) and the stochastic discount factor approaches, and (???) the model performs better than both the CAPM and Fama–French model.