A Comprehensive Test of Futures Market Disequilibrium

Whether or not trading with technical analysis is profitable is a controversial topic. This study seeks to add to our knowledge about this controversy by providing a comprehensive test of the profitability of technical trading systems. Trading is simulated for 23 trading systems on 30 futures markets for 11 years. All but two trading systems had significant gross returns. Thus, the results strongly reject the random walk model and suggest that disequilibrium models more appropriately describe daily futures prices. Although returns were less than expected by many users of these systems, several systems did generate returns significantly above transaction costs. The result for net returns are not conclusive, but they suggest there may be causes of disequilibrium beyond transaction costs. No conclusion is made about market efficiency since possible causes of disequilibrium beyond transaction costs exist.     

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.     

Is convexity efficiently priced? Evidence from international swap markets

While it is widely claimed in the literature that convexity is correctly priced, we find evidence in four major swap markets that this is the case only on average and that extended periods occur when convexity-based trading strategies offer economically very significant exceptional returns. These abnormal returns can be reaped with fully no-peek-ahead strategies and after accounting for transaction costs. We find a strong link between the periods of highest profitability and conditions of reduced market liquidity. This suggests that, as observed in recent liquidity studies on US Treasuries, temporary deviations from market efficiency at the long end of the swap curve occur when pseudo-arbitrageurs do not have sufficient capital to correct the mispricings.     

(Un)skilled leveraged trading of retail investors

We study the trading behavior of retail investors in the market of leveraged bank-issued retail derivatives, which are designed to encourage excessive trading and speculation. We investigate whether retail investors have private information and benefit disproportionately or whether they gamble without private information. We answer this question along three dimensions: (i) profitability, (ii) news trading, and (iii) transaction costs. We distinguish between derivatives by the type of underlying (index vs. individual stocks). We find that raw returns are negative for derivatives with stocks as the underlying, and only partially positive for those with index as the underlying. Nevertheless, risk-adjusted returns show poor performance, with Sharpe ratios below 0.30. We show that retail investors are attracted by news, but do not have private information prior to news events.     

Are chartists artists? The determinants and profitability of recommendations based on technical analysis

The value of technical analysis (TA) has been debated for decades; however, limited evidence exists on the profitability of investment recommendations issued by technical analysts. These ‘chartists’ sometimes claim that TA is an art rather than a science. We evaluated > 5000 TA-based buy and sell recommendations for stocks and a market index in the Netherlands issued during the period 2004–2010. The sign of a recommendation was generally in line with trading signals resulting from technical trading rules. While recommendation levels were positively associated with price trends prior to the recommendation, we did not find evidence of (abnormal) stock returns after the publication of these recommendations. In addition, stop-loss levels did not contain informational value as no meaningful returns were detected after these trigger levels were met. Given that technical recommendations follow well-known trading rules and that these recommendations are not associated with future abnormal returns, we conclude that technical analysts do not exhibit ‘artistic’ skills.     

Is the Swedish stock market efficient? Evidence from some simple trading rules

In this paper we examine the profitability of some technical trading rules in the Swedish stock market over the 1986-2004 periods. The results indicate that moving average rules do indeed have predictive power and could discern recurring-price patterns for profitable trading, even after accounting for the effects of data snooping biases. To assess the profitability of different technical trading rules and strategies, we adopt White's [White, H. (2000). A Reality Check for data snooping, Econometrica, 68, 1097-1126.] Reality Check test that quantifies the data snooping bias adjusting for its effects. Our results also support the hypothesis that technical trading rules can outperform the buy-and-hold strategy even considering transaction costs.     

Insider Trading in the OTC Market

In this paper, we examine the profitability of insider trading in firms whose securities trade in the OTC/NASDAQ market. Although the evidence suggests timing and forecasting ability on the part of insiders, high transaction costs (especially bid-ask spreads) appear to eliminate the potential for positive abnormal returns from active trading. By implication, outside investors who mimic the trading of insiders are also precluded from earning abnormal profits. In addition, we provide evidence on the determinants of insiders' profits. The data suggest that insiders closer to the firm trade on more valuable information than insiders removed from the firm.     

Pairs trading in the UK equity market: risk and return

In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive UK evidence on the profitability of the pairs trading strategy. Evidence suggests that the strategy performs well in crisis periods, so we control for both risk and liquidity to assess performance. To evaluate the effect of market frictions on the strategy, we use several estimates of transaction costs. We also present evidence on the performance of the strategy in different economic and market states. Our results show that pairs trading portfolios typically have little exposure to known equity risk factors such as market, size, value, momentum and reversal. However, a model controlling for risk and liquidity explains a far larger proportion of returns. Incorporating different assumptions about bid-ask spreads leads to reductions in performance estimates. When we allow for time-varying risk exposures, conditioned on the contemporaneous equity market return, risk-adjusted returns are generally not significantly different from zero.     

Volatility timing,sentiment, and the short-term profitability of VIX-based cross-sectional trading strategies

This paper explores the profitability of simple short-term cross-sectional trading strategies based on the implied volatility index (VIX), often referred to as an “investor fear gauge” in the stock market. These strategies involve holding sentiment-prone stocks when VIX is low and sentiment-immune stocks when VIX is high and generate significantly higher excess returns than the benchmark long–short portfolios that do not condition on VIX. We show that the profitability of our trading strategies is not subsumed by the well-known risk factors or transaction cost adjustments. Our findings are consistent with the theory of delayed arbitrage and the synchronization problem of Abreu and Brunnermeier (2002).     

Drivers of technical trend-following rules' profitability in world stock markets

Testing short-horizon technical trend-following rules, including the first comprehensive evidence on the relatively-neglected MACD rule, on a large panel of world stock market indexes, we investigate the determinants of technical trading rule profitability. The main driver of trend-following rules' profitability is return persistence, which, in turn, is negatively related to market development. Return volatility adds to technical rule profitability. A new result is that the presence of an index futures market lowers profits to short-horizon trend-following rules after controlling for other indicators of market development. This may reflect the role of transaction costs as a friction retarding incorporation of information.     

A good pair: alternative pairs-trading strategies

This paper studies alternative techniques for identifying stock pairs in a pairs-trading strategy over 1980–2014. We consider two main techniques: the distance approach and the cointegration approach. We also consider a range of parameterizations of the trading system design. Parameterization of the trading system matters for the profitability of pairs trading. We find that the cointegration approach, despite using an optimal in-sample parameterization, yields significant returns only in the 1980s. The distance approach performs better, producing significantly positive risk-adjusted returns in all sub-periods. However, when transaction costs are properly taken into account, the returns largely disappear in recent years.     

A technical approach to equity investing in emerging markets

Technical analysis (TA) is used in evaluating its predictive power for the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Market Index (EMI) that reflects 23 emerging market economies’ equity indices. We conclude strong predictive power of technical analysis for the EMI. Given this predictive power of TA, we then investigate whether investors can exploit this predictive power to beat the profitability of the Buy‐and‐Hold strategy considering both risk and transaction costs. Applying Moving Average, Relative Strength Index, Moving Average Convergence Divergence, and Rate of Change trading rules to the MSCI Emerging Market Index over the period of 11/1/1988 to 5/1/2017 reveals strong empirical evidence that investors could use TA to out‐perform the Buy‐and‐Hold strategy even when considering risk and transaction costs. This research provides evidence against the Efficient Market Hypothesis for EMI.     

Do momentum-based strategies work in emerging currency markets?

Existing studies on the profitability of trading rules in the currency market focus mainly on the currencies of developed countries. The profitability of technical trading rules on the currencies of emerging economies is surprisingly understudied. This paper evaluates the profitability of technical trading rules in emerging currency markets. Similar to Okunev and White [Okunev, J. and White, D., (2003) “Do Momentum-based Strategies Still Work in Foreign Currency Markets?” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 38, 425–447.], 354 long/short moving average rules for six currencies are investigated. It is found that investing in emerging currencies can generate a considerable annual return of over 20%, even after a 5% annual transaction cost is imposed. The trading-rule profits are relatively stable across the 20 year sample period. Furthermore, the impact of financial crises on the trading-rule returns is also examined. It is found that the profitability of the trading rules is improved after the crises.     

Optimal transaction filters under transitory trading opportunities: Theory and empirical illustration

If transitory profitable trading opportunities exist, transaction filters mitigate trading costs. We use a dynamic programming framework to design an optimal filter that maximizes after-cost expected returns. The filter size depends crucially on the degree of persistence of trading opportunities, transaction cost, and standard deviation of shocks. For daily dollar–yen exchange trading, the optimal filter can be economically significantly different from a naïve filter equal to the transaction cost. The candidate trading strategies generate positive returns that disappear after transaction costs. However, when the optimal filter is used, returns after costs remain positive and higher than for naïve filters.     

Trading strategies based on past returns: evidence from Germany

Among the various strategies studied in this paper, only momentum investing appears to earn persistently nonzero returns: From 1965 to 2014, the classical momentum strategy based on performance over the previous 2–12 months earned an average return of 1.57% per month (excluding microcap stocks and value-weighted returns). In the most recent 10-year period, this return was even larger—2.27%—which is much larger than in the USA. However, profitability net of transaction costs is weak because the strategy involves trading in disproportionately small stocks with high transaction costs, something that is particularly true for the loser portfolio. A strategy that concentrates only on the winner portfolio and thus avoids potential problems associated with (short) selling the costly loser portfolio appears to earn strong and persistently abnormal profits, even after transaction costs.     

The profitability of pairs trading strategies: distance,cointegration and copula methods

We perform an extensive and robust study of the performance of three different pairs trading strategies—the distance, cointegration and copula methods—on the entire US equity market from 1962 to 2014 with time-varying trading costs. For the cointegration and copula methods, we design a computationally efficient two-step pairs trading strategy. In terms of economic outcomes, the distance, cointegration and copula methods show a mean monthly excess return of 91, 85 and 43 bps (38, 33 and 5 bps) before transaction costs (after transaction costs), respectively. In terms of continued profitability, from 2009, the frequency of trading opportunities via the distance and cointegration methods is reduced considerably, whereas this frequency remains stable for the copula method. Further, the copula method shows better performance for its unconverged trades compared to those of the other methods. While the liquidity factor is negatively correlated to all strategies’ returns, we find no evidence of their correlation to market excess returns. All strategies show positive and significant alphas after accounting for various risk-factors. We also find that in addition to all strategies performing better during periods of significant volatility, the cointegration method is the superior strategy during turbulent market conditions.     

Technical analysis: Novel insights on contrarian trading

We analyze the predictive power of technical analysis with a novel data set based on news sentiment that allows to systematically examine a set of technical analysis indicators over an extensive time period. We do not find much statistically significant relationships with the examined indicators and future asset returns, and we almost do not find any alphas in trading strategies based on technical analysis sentiment. We find evidence for a contrarian-based hypothesis: past market returns and technical analysis sentiment are able to predict future technical analysis sentiment with a negative relationship.     

Technical trading rules for nonlinear dynamics of stock returns: evidence from the G-7 stock markets

This paper explores a possible link between an asymmetric dynamic process of stock returns and profitable technical trading rules. Using the G-7 stock market indexes, we show that the dynamic process of daily index returns is better characterized by nonlinearity arising from an asymmetric reverting property. The asymmetric reverting property of stock returns is exploitable in generating profitable buy and sells signals for technical trading strategies. The bootstrap analysis shows that not all nonlinearities generate profitable buy and sell signals, but rather only the nonlinearities generating a consistent asymmetrical pattern of return dynamics can be exploitable for the profitability of the trading rules. The significant positive (negative) returns from buy (sell) signals are a consequence of trading rules that exploit the asymmetric nonlinear dynamics of the stock returns that revolve around positive (negative) unconditional mean returns under prior positive (negative) return patterns. Our results corroborate the arguments for the usefulness of technical trading strategies in stock market investments.     

On the Use of Multifactor Models to Evaluate Mutual Fund Performance

We show that multifactor performance estimates for mutual funds suffer from systematic biases and argue that these biases are a result of miscalculating the factor premiums. Because the factor proxies are based on hypothetical stock portfolios and do not incorporate transaction costs, trade impact, and trading restrictions, the factor premiums are either over- or underestimated. We argue that factor proxies based on mutual fund returns rather than on stock returns provide better benchmarks to evaluate professional money managers.