Proximity to 52-week High and Short-term Momentum/Reversal

What determines whether a stock will exhibit short-term momentum or short-term reversal? In their May 2022 paper entitled “Short-term Relative-Strength Strategies, Turnover, and the Connection between Winner Returns and the 52-week High”, building upon prior research, Chen Chen, Chris Stivers and Licheng Sun investigate interactions among proximity to 52-week high, share turnover and 1-month return momentum/reversal behaviors for U.S. stocks.  Specifically, at the end of each month t, they form 125 portfolios by:

1. Sorting stocks into fifths (quintiles) based on return during month t.
2. Further sorting these quintiles stocks into sub-quintiles based on ratio of price at the end of month t-1 to highest price over the preceding 52 weeks.
3. Further sorting the sub-quintiles into sub-sub-quintiles based on share turnover during month t.

They then use month t+1 value-weighted returns of the resulting 125 portfolios to evaluate short-term momentum/reversal strategies in multiple ways: buying winners and shorting losers (momentum); buying losers and shorting winners (reversal); and, winners-only or losers-only strategies based on 52-week high proximity. Using the specified trading data for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks priced at least $1 during July 1963 to December 2020, they find that:

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