Technical Trading

Does timing the U.S. stock market with moving averages work? In his October 2015 paper entitled “A Comprehensive Look at the Real-Life Performance of Moving Average Trading Strategies”, Valeriy Zakamulin employs a very long dataset to estimate out-of-sample performance and robustness (subsample performance) of four distinct technical trading rules. Specifically, he seeks answers to the following questions:

• How well does market timing really work?
• Does overweighting or underweighting recent prices improve market timing?
• Do timing rules have optimal lookback intervals?
• Can timing rules accurately exploit bull and bear market states?

The four trading rules are:

1. Momentum (MOM) – final price minus initial price across the measurement interval.
2. Price minus Simple Moving-Average (P-SMA) – final price minus linearly decreasing weighted average of past prices backward over the measurement interval.
3. Price minus Reverse Exponential Moving Average (P-REMA) – final price minus exponentially decreasing weighted average of past prices with decay factor 0.8, for an effect between MOM and P-SMA.
4. Double-Crossover Method (DCM) – long-interval EMA minus short-interval EMA with decay factors 0.8 and the short interval fixed at two months.

For all four rules, a positive (negative or zero) signal means hold stocks (the risk-free asset) the following month. For optimization of moving average lookback intervals, he considers both rolling 10-year windows and inception-to-date (expanding window) data and tests intervals up to 24 months. His total sample spans 1860 through 2014, with the first 10 years reserved for lookback interval optimization. He also considers two equal subsamples (1860-1942 and 1932-2014), with the first 10 years of each reserved for initial optimization. He assumes one-way switching friction 0.25%. He uses several risk-adjusted performance measures, emphasizing Sharpe ratio. Using monthly capital gains and total returns of the S&P Composite stock price index and the contemporaneous U.S. Treasury bill yield as the risk-free rate during January 1860 through December 2014, he finds that: Keep Reading

Do small capitalization stocks exploitably lag broad market trends? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Slow Trading and Stock Return Predictability”, Matthijs Lof and Matti Suominen investigate whether overall stock market trends predict variation in the size effect and therefore the performance of small capitalization exchange-traded funds (ETF). For size effect testing, they each year at the end of June rank stocks into tenths (deciles) by market capitalization and calculate the size effect as the difference in value-weighted average returns between the smallest and largest deciles. Using daily returns, trading volumes and institutional buying and selling data for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks during 1964 through 2014 and for a selection of small capitalization ETFs as available through 2014, they find that: Keep Reading

Is there a way to suppress the volatility and drawdowns of a mixed value and momentum stock strategy while retaining most of its benefit? In his September 2015 paper entitled “Learning to Play Offense and Defense: Combining Value and Momentum from the Bottom up, and the Top Down”, Mebane Faber examines the feasibility of a strategy that combines market valuation and market trend timing (defense) with a mixed value and momentum stock selection strategy (offense). Specifically:

For offense, he each month: (1) ranks stocks by each of price-to-earnings, price-to-book and earnings before interest and taxes-to-total enterprise value ratios and then re-ranks them by the average of the three separate value rankings; (2) ranks stocks by each of 3-month, 6-month and 12-month past returns and then re-ranks them by the average of the three separate momentum rankings; and, (3) forms an equally weighted portfolio of the top 100 value and top 100 momentum stocks and holds for three months (three overlapping portfolios).

For defense, he each month: (1) hedges half of the portfolio by shorting the S&P 500 Index if the long-term real earnings yield for the S&P 500 (inverse of the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings ratio, CAPE or P/E10 as calculated by Robert Shiller, minus the most recently available actual 12-month U.S. inflation rate) is in the 20% of its lowest inception-to-date monthly values; and, (2) hedges half of the portfolio by shorting the S&P 500 Index if the index is below its 12-month simple moving average. 

The overall portfolio can therefore be 100% long “offense” stocks, 50% hedged or market neutral. He does not account for costs of portfolio reformations or hedging. Using monthly total returns for all NYSE stocks in the top 60% of market capitalizations, monthly levels of the S&P 500 Total Return Index and monthly values of CAPE during 1964 through 2014, he finds that: Keep Reading

Do stock limit order books tip the direction of stock price? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Enhancing Trading Strategies with Order Book Signals”, Alvaro Cartea, Ryan Donnelly and Sebastian Jaimungal test the use of buying and selling pressures based on limit order book data to predict the direction, depth and magnitude of near-term stock price movements. They define pressure simply as the difference between the volume of limit orders at the highest bid minus volume of limit orders at the lowest ask, divided by the sum of the two volumes. When the ratio approaches 1 (-1), there is strong buying (selling) pressure. They test the degree to which traders can enhance performance of round-trip trading strategies by exploiting buying and selling pressure. Using stock limit order book data for ten Nasdaq stocks with relatively large tick sizes during January 2014 through June 2014 to calibrate trading rules and during July 2014 through December 2014 to test application of the rules to trading, they find that: Keep Reading

Are annual stock market winning and losing streaks informative about future market performance? To investigate, we consider up and down annual streaks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). We look at streaks in two ways:

1. Retrospective (non-overlapping). We know the total duration of each streak.
2. Experienced (real-time and partially overlapping). We know each year how long a streak has lasted, but we don’t know when it will end.

Using DJIA annual returns for 1929 through 2014 (86 years), we find that: Keep Reading

What drives the profitability of algorithmic long-short statistical arbitrage trading (such as pairs trading) of liquid U.S. stocks? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Performance v. Turnover: A Story by 4,000 Alphas”, Zura Kakushadze and Igor Tulchinsky examine portfolio turnover and portfolio volatility as potential net return drivers for such trading. Their data source is 4,002 randomly selected portfolios (essentially synonymous with “alphas” in their lexicon) from a substantially larger survivorship bias-free pool of real trading accounts. Position holding periods for sampled portfolios range from 0.7 to 19 trading days. The authors exclude 366 portfolios with negative performance and then remove 347 portfolios as outliers for a residual sample of 3,289 portfolios. Using daily closing prices for holdings in these portfolios over an unspecified sample period, they find that: Keep Reading

Does simple technical analysis based on moving averages work on high-frequency spot gold and silver trading? In their August 2015 paper entitled “Does Technical Analysis Beat the Market? – Evidence from High Frequency Trading in Gold and Silver”, Andrew Urquhart, Jonathan Batten, Brian Lucey, Frank McGroarty and Maurice Peat examine the profitability of 5-minute moving average technical analysis in the gold and silver spot markets. They consider simple moving average (SMA), exponential moving average (EMA) and weighted moving average (WMA) crossing rules. These rules buy (sell) when a fast moving average crosses above (below) a slow moving average. They start with four commonly used parameter settings, all using a fast moving average of one interval paired with a slow moving average of 50, 100, 150 or 200 intervals [(1-50), (1-100), (1-150) or (1-200)]. They then test all combinations of a fast moving average ranging from 1 to 49 intervals and a slow moving average ranging from 50 to 500 intervals, generating a total of 66,297 distinct rules. To compensate for data snooping bias, they specify in-sample and out-of-sample subperiods and test whether the most successful in-sample rules work out-of-sample. They also use bootstrapping as an additional robustness test. Using 5-minute spot gold and silver prices during January 2008 through mid-September 2014, they find that: Keep Reading

Are expert technicians or fundamentalists better forecasters of short-term and intermediate-term asset returns? In the August 2015 version of their paper entitled “Talking Numbers: Technical versus Fundamental Recommendations”, Doron Avramov, Guy Kaplanski and Haim Levy assess the economic value of dual technical and fundamental recommendations presented simultaneously on “Talking Numbers”, a CNBC and Yahoo joint broadcast… “featuring fundamental and technical recommendations before and during the market open. Dual recommendations are made by highly experienced analysts representing prominent institutions.” Recommendations address both individual stocks and asset classes, including U.S. and foreign broad equity indexes, sector/industry equity indexes, bonds, commodities and exchange rates. Using 1,000 dual recommendations on 262 stocks and 620 dual recommendations on other assets, along with associated price data, during November 2011 through December 2014, they find that: Keep Reading

Stock return anomaly studies based on firm accounting variables generally employ annually reformed portfolios that are long (short) the tenth of stocks expected to perform well (poorly). Does adding monthly portfolio updates based on technical stock price trend measurements boost anomaly portfolio performance? In the June 2015 version of their paper entitled “Anomalies Enhanced: The Use of Higher Frequency Information”, Yufeng Han, Dayong Huang and Guofu Zhou test eight equal-weighted long-short portfolios that combine annual screening based on a predictive accounting variable with monthly screening based on a simple moving average (SMA)-based stock price trend rule. The eight accounting variables (screened in June based on prior December data) are: (1) book-to-market ratio; (2) gross profitability; (3) operating profitability; (4) asset growth; (5) investment growth; (6) net stock issuance; (7) accruals; and, (8) net operating assets. The price trend screen excludes from the long (short) side of the portfolio any stock for which 50-day SMA is less than (greater than) 200-day SMA at the end of the prior month. Using accounting and daily price data for a broad sample of U.S. stocks during July 1965 through December 2013, they find that: Keep Reading

What is the best stock pairs trading method? In their June 2015 paper entitled “The Profitability of Pairs Trading Strategies: Distance, Cointegration, and Copula Methods”, Hossein Rad, Rand Kwong Yew Low and Robert Faff compare performances of three pairs trading methods as applied to U.S. stocks.

1. Distance – Select the 20 stock pairs with the smallest sum of squared differences in initially normalized dividend-adjusted prices during a 12-month formation period. Then re-normalize prices of selected pairs and initiate equal long-short trades when prices diverge by at least two formation-period standard deviations during a subsequent six-month trading period. Close trades when prices converge or, if not, at the end of the trading period. Re-open trades if prices diverge again withing the trading period.
2. Cointegration – Sort stock pairs based on sum of squared differences in initially normalized dividend-adjusted prices during a 12-month formation period. Then determine which pairs are cointegrated (exhibit a reliable mean-reverting relationship) during the formation period, and select the 20 cointegrated pairs with the smallest sum of squared differences. Over the subsequent six-month trading period, trade pair divergences and convergences based on cointegration statistics, with long and short position sizes also determined by these statistics.
3. Copula – Select the 20 stock pairs with the smallest sum of squared differences in initially normalized dividend-adjusted prices during a 12-month formation period. Then construct best-fit copulas for each pair and use copula statistics to determine when pair prices diverge and converge during a subsequent six-month trading period, opening and closing equal long-short trades accordingly.

They iterate each method monthly, so each always involves six overlapping portfolios. They assume round trip broker fees start at 0.7% in 1962 and gradually decline to 0.09% in recent years. They estimate impact of trading on price as 0.3% during 1962-1988 and 0.2% since. They assume zero cost of shorting. They calculate returns based on both employed capital (funding only actual trades) and committed capital (funding 20 concurrent positions per portfolio, with no return on cash). Monthly return for each method is the equally weighted average for the six overlapping portfolios. Using daily dividend-adjusted prices for a broad sample of relatively liquid U.S. common stocks during 1962 through 2014, they find that: Keep Reading