Lessons from the evolution of foreign exchange trading strategies

The adaptive markets hypothesis posits that trading strategies evolve as traders adapt their behavior to changing circumstances. This paper studies the evolution of trading strategies for a hypothetical trader who chooses portfolios from foreign exchange (forex) technical rules in major and emerging markets, the carry trade, and US equities. The results show that a backtesting procedure to choose optimal portfolios improves upon the performance of nonadaptive rules. We also find that forex trading alone dramatically outperforms the S&P 500, with much larger Sharpe ratios over the whole sample, but there is little gain to coordinating forex and equity strategies, which explains why practitioners consider these tools separately. Forex trading returns dip significantly in the 1990s but recover by the end of the decade and have been markedly superior to an equity position since 1998. Overall, trading rule returns still exist in forex markets—with substantial stability in the types of rules—though they have migrated to emerging markets to a considerable degree.     

An analysis of trading strategies in eleven European stock markets

Abstract

In recent years, the validity of the weak form efficient market hypothesis (EMH) has been called into question as several studies have uncovered evidence that technical trading rules have predictive ability with respect to both developed and emerging stock market indices. This study analyses the forecasting power of 2 of the most popular trading rules using index data for a selection of 11 European stock markets over the January 1991 to December 2000 period. The findings indicate that the emerging markets included in this paper are informationally inefficient; these markets displayed some degree of predictability in their share returns, although the developed markets did not. Furthermore, the results point to large differences in the performance of the rules examined; while small size filters consistently outperformed the buy-and-hold strategy in the emerging markets examined even after the consideration of transaction costs, the performance of the moving average rules was erratic and varied dramatically from market to market.     

Do auditing standards improve the accounting disclosure and information environment of public companies? Evidence from the emerging markets in China

In this paper, we investigate the impact of the implementation of a set of new auditing standards in 1996 on the information environment in the emerging markets in China. Because the implementation of such standards can increase the quality and/or quantity of accounting disclosures, it can be conceptualized as an improvement in the information environment of public companies. We investigate the improvement in accounting disclosure and information environment from both the market perspective and the accounting perspective. First, consistent with the information economics literature (e.g., [Holthausen, R., & Verrecchia, R., (1990). The effect of informedness and consensus on price and volume behavior. The Accounting Review, 65, 191–208]), we find that companies experience a significant increase in trading volume and price volatility subsequent to the implementation of the standards. Second, consistent with the literature on earnings management (e.g., [Chen, C. W. K., & Yuan, H. Q., (2004). Earnings management and capital resource allocation: evidence from China's accounting-based regulation of right issue. The Accounting Review, 79, 645–665, Jian, M., & Wong, T. J., (2004). Earnings management and tunneling through related party transactions: evidence from Chinese corporate groups. Working Paper, Nanyang Technological University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology]), we find a decrease in earnings management and, hence, an increase in quality of earnings. Finally, we find a decrease in the synchronicity of stock prices and, hence, an increase in the quality of firm-specific information available to investors, which is consistent with the literature on price synchronicity (e.g., [Morck, R., Yeung, B., & Yu, W., (2000). The information content of stock markets: why do emerging markets have synchronous stock price movements? Journal of Financial Economics, 58, 215–260]). Our results have significant implications for standard setters, regulators, researchers, managers, and investors in general and those in the emerging markets in particular.     

Idiosyncratic volatility and cross‐sectional stock returns in Southeast Asian stock markets

We examine the role of idiosyncratic risk in five ASEAN markets of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Our research was motivated by the findings of Ang et al. (2006, 2009) of a ‘puzzling’ negative relation between idiosyncratic volatility and 1‐month ahead stock returns in developed markets and the suggestion of the ubiquity of these results in other markets. In contrast, we find no evidence of an idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in these Asian stock markets; instead, we document a positive relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and returns in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia and no relationship in the Philippines. The idiosyncratic volatility trading strategy could result in significant trading profits in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and to some extent in Indonesia. Our study underscores the fact that generalizing empirical results obtained in developed stock markets to new and emerging markets could potentially be misleading.     

Dynamic Asset Allocation and the Informational Efficiency of Markets

Markets have an allocational role; even in the absence of news about payoffs, prices change to facilitate trade and allocate resources to their best use. Allocational price changes create noise in the signal extraction process, and markets where such trading is important are markets in which we may expect to find a failure of informational efficiency. An important source of allocational trading is the use of dynamic trading strategies caused by the incomplete equitization of risks. Incomplete equitization causes trade. Trade implies the inefficiency of passive strategies, thus requiring investors to determine whether price changes are informational or allocational.     

Extreme observations and risk assessment in the equity markets of MENA region: Tail measures and Value-at-Risk

The standard “delta-normal” Value-at-Risk methodology requires that the underlying returns generating distribution for the security in question is normally distributed, with moments which can be estimated using historical data and are time-invariant. However, the stylized fact that returns are fat-tailed is likely to lead to under-prediction of both the size of extreme market movements and the frequency with which they occur. In this paper, we use the extreme value theory to analyze four emerging markets belonging to the MENA region (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey). We focus on the tails of the unconditional distribution of returns in each market and provide estimates of their tail index behavior. In the process, we find that the returns have significantly fatter tails than the normal distribution and therefore introduce the extreme value theory. We then estimate the maximum daily loss by computing the Value-at-Risk (VaR) in each market. Consistent with the results from other developing countries [see Gencay, R. and Selcuk, F., (2004). Extreme value theory and Value-at-Risk: relative performance in emerging markets. International Journal of Forecasting, 20, 287–303; Mendes, B., (2000). Computing robust risk measures in emerging equity markets using extreme value theory. Emerging Markets Quarterly, 4, 25–41; Silva, A. and Mendes, B., (2003). Value-at-Risk and extreme returns in Asian stock markets. International Journal of Business, 8, 17–40], generally, we find that the VaR estimates based on the tail index are higher than those based on a normal distribution for all markets, and therefore a proper risk assessment should not neglect the tail behavior in these markets, since that may lead to an improper evaluation of market risk. Our results should be useful to investors, bankers, and fund managers, whose success depends on the ability to forecast stock price movements in these markets and therefore build their portfolios based on these forecasts.     

Market Efficiency and the Returns to Simple Technical Trading Rules: New Evidence from U.S. Equity Market and Chinese Equity Markets

Numerous studies in the finance literature have investigated technical analysis to determine its validity as an investment tool. This study is an attempt to explore whether some forms of technical analysis can predict stock price movement and make excess profits based on certain trading rules in markets with different efficiency level. To avoid using arbitrarily selected 26 trading rules as did by Brock, Lakonishok and LeBaron (1992) and later by Bessembinder and Chan (1998), this paper examines predictive power and profitability of simple trading rules by expanding their universe of 26 rules to 412 rules. In order to find out the relationship between market efficiency and excess return by applying trading rules, we examine excess return over periods in U.S. markets and also compare the excess returns between U.S. market and Chinese markets. Our results found that there is no evidence at all supporting technical forecast power by these trading rules in U.S. equity index after 1975. During the 1990s break-even costs turned to be negative, –0.06%, even failing to beat a buy-holding strategyin U.S. equity market. In comparison, our results provide support for the technical strategies even in the presence of trading cost in Chinese stock markets.     

Dispersed Trading and the Prevention of Market Failure: the Case of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange

With augmented demands on power grids resulting in longer and larger blackouts combined with heightened concerns of terrorist attacks, trading institutions and policy makers have widened their search for systems that avoid market failure during these disturbing events. We provide insight into this issue by examining trading behaviour at the Copenhagen Stock Exchange during a major blackout. We find that although market quality declined, markets remained functional and some price discovery occurred during the blackout period suggesting that the NOREX structure of interlinked trading systems combined with widely dispersed trading locations may be a viable means of protection against market failure during massive power disruptions or terrorist attacks.     

Technical Trading Rules in Emerging Markets and the 1997 Asian Currency Crises

The ability of simple technical trading rules to forecast future stock market movements is considered for seventeen emerging markets, sampled from January 1986 to September 2003. Some of the trading rules considered generated significant returns; this information could be exploited profitably on occasion. Market conditions and trading volume are found to be important to determining the usefulness of technical trading rules.     

Adaptive Learning in an Expectational Difference Equation with Several Lags: Selecting among Learnable REE

It is demonstrated that adaptive learning in the least squares sense may be incapable of satisfactorily reducing the number of attainable equilibria in a rational expectations model when focusing on the forward‐solutions to the model. The model examined, as an illustration, is a basic asset pricing model for exchange rate determination that is augmented with technical trading in the currency market in the form of moving averages since it is the most commonly used technique according to questionnaire surveys. The forward‐solutions to such a model are preferable to the backward‐solutions that are normally utilized since announcement effects is an important feature in currency trade. Because of technical trading in foreign exchange, the current exchange rate depends on j _max lags of the exchange rate, meaning that the model has j _max+1 rational expectations equilibria, where several of them are adaptively learnable in the least squares sense. However, since past exchange rates should not affect the current exchange rate when technical trading is absent, it is possible to single out a unique equilibrium among the adaptively learnable equilibria that is economically meaningful. It is worth noting that the model examined can also be viewed as a model for stock price determination in which the forward‐solutions to the model are preferable to the backward‐solutions since the importance of announcement effects is a common characteristic for currency and stock markets.     

Is technical analysis profitable on a stock market which has characteristics that suggest it may be inefficient?

This paper considers the returns to technical analysis on the New Zealand stock market. The small nature, short-selling constraints, lack of analyst coverage, and loose insider trading regulation suggest that the New Zealand equity market may be less efficient than overseas markets. This raises the possibility that technical analysis is still profitable in New Zealand. Using a bootstrapping technique with common null models for stock returns and 12 popular technical trading rules, we find that the returns to technical analysis in New Zealand follow a similar pattern to those in large offshore markets. Technical analysis is no longer profitable.     

Migration,spillovers, and trade diversion: The impact of internationalization on domestic stock market activity

This paper studies the relation between internationalization (firms cross-listing, issuing depositary receipts, or raising capital in international stock markets) and the trading activity of the remaining firms in domestic markets. Using a panel of 3000 firms from 55 emerging economies during 1989–2000, we find that internationalization is negatively related to the trading activity of domestic firms. We identify two channels. First, the trading of international firms migrates from domestic to international markets and this migration along with the reduction in domestic trading of international firms has negative spillover effects on domestic firm trading activity. Second, there is trade diversion within domestic markets as trading activity shifts out of domestic firms and into international firms.     

Transmission of Information across International Equity Markets

This article provides evidence of information transmission fromthe United States and Japan to Korean and Thai equity markets.Information is defined as important macroeconomic announcementsin the United States, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. Using high-frequencyintraday data, I find a large and significant association betweendeveloped-economy macroeconomic announcements and emerging-economyequity volatility and trading volume at short time horizons.Previous studies’ findings of at most weak evidence oftransmission from developed to emerging economies may be dueto their use of lower frequency data and their focus on developed-economyfinancial market innovations as a proxy for information. (JELE44, G14, G15)     

Causal and Dynamic Relationships among Stock Returns,Return Volatility and Trading Volume: Evidence from Emerging markets in South-East Asia

This paper examines the causal and dynamic relationships among stock returns, return volatility and trading volume for five emerging markets in South-East Asia—Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. We find strong evidence of asymmetry in the relationship between the stock returns and trading volume; returns are important in predicting their future dynamics as well as those of the trading volume, but trading volume has a very limited impact on the future dynamics of stock returns. However, the trading volume of some markets seems to contain information that is useful in predicting future dynamics of return volatility.     

On the efficacy of stop-loss rules in the presence of overnight gaps

A stop-loss rule is a risk management tool whereby the investor predefines some condition that, upon being triggered by market dynamics, implies the liquidation of her outstanding position. Such a tool is widely used by practitioners in financial markets with the hope of improving their investment performance by cutting losses and consolidating gains. We analyze in this work the performance of four popular implementations of stop-loss rules applied to asset prices whose returns are modeled with consideration of overnight gaps, that is, jumps from the closing price of one day to the opening price of the next trading day. In addition, our models include acute momentary price drops (flash crashes), which are often believed to erode the performance gains that might be derived from stop-loss rules. For this analysis we consider different models of asset returns: random walk, autoregressive and regime-switching models. In addition, we test the performance of the considered stop-loss rules in a non-parametric, data-driven framework based on the stationary bootstrap. As a general conclusion we find that, even when including overnight gaps and flash crashes in our price models, in rising markets stop-loss rules improve the expected risk-adjusted return according to most metrics, while improving absolute expected return in falling markets. Furthermore, we find that in general the simple fixed percentage stop-loss rule may be, in risk-adjusted terms, the most powerful among the popular rules that this work considers.     

Testing the predictive ability of technical analysis using a new stepwise test without data snooping bias

In the finance literature, statistical inferences for large-scale testing problems usually suffer from data snooping bias. In this paper we extend the “superior predictive ability” (SPA) test of Hansen (2005, JBES) to a stepwise SPA test that can identify predictive models without potential data snooping bias. It is shown analytically and by simulations that the stepwise SPA test is more powerful than the stepwise Reality Check test of Romano and Wolf (2005, Econometrica). We then apply the proposed test to examine the predictive ability of technical trading rules based on the data of growth and emerging market indices and their exchange traded funds (ETFs). It is found that technical trading rules have significant predictive power for these markets, yet such evidence weakens after the ETFs are introduced.     

Financial reforms and time-varying microstructures in emerging equity markets

This paper seeks to investigate the impact of financial reforms on time-varying microstructures in emerging equity markets. We develop annual indicators of informational efficiency, market volatility and transaction costs, using daily data for a panel of 28 emerging markets over the 1996–2007 period. We then analyze the impact of insider trading regulations, trading system automation and accounting standardization on microstructures through a set of panel regressions controlling for financial development and simultaneous reforms. Our results suggest that emerging market microstructures are affected by economic and political context, are strongly related to one another and depend on specific institutional reforms.     

An Empirical Investigation of Eastern European Bond Markets

We examine the value of Eastern European emerging bond markets to global fixed income managers. In an environment where bonds from traditional developed markets are offering modest yields, emerging market bonds with attractive yields are becoming more popular with institutional managers. Furthermore, the returns on these bonds exhibit low correlations with traditional fixed income investments and thus offer opportunities for portfolio diversification. We develop a multifactor forecasting model and estimate its parameters using a dynamic Kalman filter procedure. The forecasts are then used to construct optimal mean–variance portfolios with and without emerging market bonds. We find that the portfolios that include emerging market bonds have significantly higher Sharpe ratios.     

Market Efficiency and Returns to Simple Technical Trading Rules: Further Evidence from U.S., U.K., Asian and Chinese Stock Markets

Tian, Wan and Guo (2002) explored the predictability and profitability of technical trading rules in markets with different efficiency levels; namely, the U.S. and China. In the case of the U.S. they found rules to have no predictability after 1975, whereas their results give support to technical trading rules having both predictability and profitability for the Chinese markets across the 1990's. The purpose of this paper is to extend the analysis of Tian et al. in two ways. First, to see if the conclusions extend to other markets – namely, the U.K., Hong Kong and Japan. Second, in the case of China, to examine whether the predictability and profitability of technical trading rules changed across the 1990's. On the basis of daily data Tian et al's results for the U.S. market are supported by the results for a number of the main developed markets where the technical trading rules had predictive ability during the 1970's that disappeared by the 1990's. Furthermore, the results suggest that while technical trading rules had short term predictive ability and profitability in the Chinese stock markets during the 1990's, this lessened as the decade progressed. JEL Classification: G14, G15     

Performance of Currency Trading Strategies in Developed and Emerging Markets: Some Striking Differences

Expanding the currency investment universe makes a lot of sense from a diversification point of view. Nevertheless, 60% of the total foreign exchange turnover is still only traded in three currency pairs (USD/EUR, USD/JPY and USD/GBP). The share of trading in local currencies in emerging markets is only around 5%. This can be explained by the fact that some currency managers fear investing in emerging market currencies. Many believe that political risk is the most dominant driver in these markets and that traditional investment rules do not work. In this paper, I apply four technical trading strategies for the developed market currencies and for the most traded emerging market currencies. The empirical results show some striking differences. They suggest that trend-following rules work better for emerging market currencies, while carry trading strategies perform better across developed market currencies. Nevertheless, it seems that conventional techniques could be successfully applied to both developed and emerging market currencies. I conclude that currency managers should not be afraid to diversify into emerging market currencies. They should, however, adjust their trading style accordingly.