The 52-week high strategy and information uncertainty

Abstract

This paper examines the driver of the 52-week high strategy, which is long in stocks close to their 52-week high price and short in stocks with a price far from their one-year high, and tests the hypothesis that its profitability can be explained by anchoring - a behavioral bias. To test the null, we examine whether the 52-week high criterion has more predictive power in cases of larger information uncertainty. This hypothesis is motivated by a psychological insight, which states that behavioral biases increase in uncertainty. For six proxies of ambiguity, we document a positive relationship to returns of 52-week high winner stocks and a negative relationship to returns of 52-week high loser stocks. The opposite effect of information uncertainty on winner and loser stocks implies that the 52-week high profits are increasing in uncertainty measures. Moreover, the study documents that the six variables have a similar impact on momentum profits. Hence, we cannot reject the hypothesis that anchoring explains the profits to the 52-week high strategy and that it is the driver of the momentum anomaly.