Contrarian Profits Research Articles

ADRs under momentum and contrarian strategies

Given the recent growth in the American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) and the current general climate of globalization in world equity exchanges, this paper investigates the ADRs as a distinct group of stocks within the framework of momentum and contrarian strategies. It considers the entire body of the level III ADRs from January 1982 to December 2005 and provides an analysis of their performance under various momentum and contrarian strategies. The methodology that is employed draws upon and is an extension of Lo and Mackinlay [Lo, Andrew W. and A. Craig MacKinlay, 1990. When are contrarian profits due to stock market overreaction? Review of Financial Studies, v3 (2), 175–206.] and Jegadeesh and Titman [Jegadeesh, Narasimhan and Sheridan Titman, 2001. Profitability of momentum strategies: An evaluation of alternative explanations, Journal of Finance, v56 (2, Apr), 699–720.]. The results indicate considerable support for the presence of the momentum and contrarian strategies in the ADRs market. The profitability of such strategies obviously runs counter to the efficient market hypothesis. These issues are elaborated upon and suggestions for further research are offered.

Profitability of Contrarian Strategies: Evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange*

ABSTRACTThis study examines the momentum and contrarian effects on stock returns in one of the leading emerging markets, which has a unique market structure, with record‐high inflation, high volatility, high turnover, low correlation of returns with other exchanges and myopic investors: the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). It also investigates the weak‐form efficiency of the stock market by examining the profitability of a number of contrarian strategies based on past returns, size, price, book‐to‐market and earnings‐to‐price ratios of stocks in various lengths of formation and holding periods. Our findings show that a self‐financing trading strategy, buying past loser stocks and selling past winner stocks generate significant abnormal returns (approximately 15% annually) in ISE. However, these large contrarian profits are for bearing the extra risk of loser stocks similar to the US results. We also find significant price, size, and B/M effects in stock returns. Finally, our results show the continous profitability of contrarian strategies both in very short (starting from 1 month) and in long holding periods (up to 36 months), which appears to be related to country‐specific factors.

Contrarian and momentum profitability revisited: Evidence from the London Stock Exchange 1964–2005

We provide evidence relating to contrarian and momentum profits for the LSE, using 64 strategies for all 6531 stocks traded from 1964 to 2005. Thorough analysis demands controlling for key potential (contradictory) explanations of the strategies’ profitability which span psychological characteristics (e.g. overreaction/underreaction), excess risk, seasonality, size, and microstructure induced biases. Results provide a measurement of the miscalculations which occur when ignoring survivorship and microstructure biases. Contrarian/momentum profits cannot be explained by seasonality, size, or a single factor risk model. However, the Fama–French three factor model rationalises all contrarian profits. Important differences are found when examining a truncated sample period demonstrating the need to recognise that financial markets can change markedly through time.

Sources of contrarian profits in the Japanese stock market

This paper investigates the profitability of contrarian strategies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) across various ranking and holding horizons ranging from 1 month to 3 years. In sharp contrast to the evidence from the U.S. and European markets, our data show that contrarian strategies are profitable in Japan across all horizons, especially with a very short horizon of 1 month or a very long horizon of 2 years or longer. The results are very robust to skipping 1 month between the holding and ranking periods, excluding firms with extreme past returns, and partitioning the whole sample into bull and bear subperiods. In addition, we find that contrarian strategies perform much better when the aggregate market also performs better in either the ranking or the holding period. Finally, contrarian profits are mostly attributed to the lead–lag effect. Further analysis indicates that contrarian profits are not attributed to the pricing errors of the Fama–French three-factor model. Instead, contrarian profits are mainly due to cross-autocorrelations among firm-specific error components of the Fama–French three-factor model.

The effect of time-varying risk on the profitability of contrarian investment strategies in a thinly traded market: a Kalman filter approach

On face value studies documenting contrarian profits challenge the efficient markets paradigm. However most of them assume that systematic risk is constant when in reality it varies (Ross, 1989) especially in emerging markets (Aggarwal et al., 1999). The study in the first instance investigates whether there are long-term contrarian profits in a thinly traded market, and whether such profits can be rationalized by time variation in risk using a Kalman Filtering approach. The results indicate that failing to incorporate time variation in risk may lead to biased conclusions and present false evidence against the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

Contrarian Investment, New Share Issues and Repurchases

This paper examines the returns to investment strategies based on the interactions between value-to-market indicators and corporate financing transactions that increase or decrease the firm's outstanding equity, i.e., equity issues and repurchases. Portfolio-level analyses and firm-level cross-sectional regressions indicate that the well-documented contrarian profits soar when value stocks which repurchase shares (value repurchasers) and growth stocks which issue shares (growth issuers) are considered. The results also show that value-to-market ratios cannot capture the cross-sectional variation in expected stock returns when value issuers and growth repurchasers are considered. Based on various risk measures, we find that value repurchasers are not riskier than growth issuers. Furthermore, value repurchasers (growth issuers) experience the highest increase (decrease) in future growth rates. Our findings are consistent with the misvaluation explanation for the superior returns of value stocks.

Short-horizon contrarian and momentum strategies in Asian markets: An integrated analysis

In this paper, we test the profitability of short-term contrarian and momentum strategies, which take into account the effects of trading activity, size/value characteristics, and asymmetric investor responses to news regarding stock markets in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore during 1990–2000. Except for the Taiwanese and Korean markets, “winner” (“loser”) portfolios experience subsequent reversal ( momentum) of stock prices. Among actively traded stocks, significant contrarian profits can be obtained from only “winner” portfolios in Japan, while sizeable momentum profits from “loser portfolios” in both Japan and Hong Kong.

Short‐term Contrarian Strategies in the London Stock Exchange: Are They Profitable? Which Factors Affect Them?

Abstract: This paper provides evidence on short‐term contrarian profits and their sources for the London Stock Exchange. Profits are decomposed to sources due to factors derived from the Fama and French (1996) three‐factor model. For the empirical testing, size‐sorted sub‐samples are used, and adjustments for infrequent trading and bid‐ask biases are also made. Results indicate that UK short‐term contrarian strategies are profitable and more pronounced for extreme market capitalization stocks. These profits persist even when the sample is adjusted for market frictions, risk, seasonality, and irrespective of whether equally‐weighted or value‐weighted portfolios are employed. The most important factor that drives contrarian profits appears to be investor overreaction to firm‐specific information.

Effects of order flow imbalance on short-horizon contrarian strategies in the Australian equity market

We use Lo and MacKinlay's [Lo, A.W., MacKinlay, C., 1990. When are contrarian profits due to stock market overreaction? The Review of Financial Studies 3, 175–205.] contrarian portfolio approach to examine the profitability of short-horizon contrarian strategies in the context of the Australian Stock Exchange. The results show that simple contrarian strategies lead to small but still statistically significant profits when applied to daily and intra-day portfolio formation. However, the profits are not sufficient to cover transaction costs for institutional investors. The source of contrarian profits is also analyzed leading to the conclusion that stock market overreaction is found to be the primary source of contrarian profits. We also examine the relation between the degree of return reversal and order flow activity after abnormal price changes. We find that the degree of return reversal is positively related to the level of order flow imbalance. Larger profits are generated from order flow based contrarian strategies when the order flow imbalances are high.

Risk-Adjusted Long-Term Contrarian Profits: Evidence from Non-S&P 500 High-Volume Stocks

Can trading volume help unravel the long-term overreaction puzzle? With portfolios of non-S&P 500 NYSE stocks, we show that (1) both the high- and low-volume (abnormal volume) contrarian portfolios earn a much higher market-adjusted excess return than the normal-volume contrarian portfolio, (2) however, when leverage-induced risk is factored in, excess returns from contrarian portfolios with normal- and low-volume stocks are insignificant, (3) only excess returns from high-volume contrarian stocks are significant and cannot be explained by the time-varying risk and return framework, and (4) such high-volume, risk-adjusted excess returns arise mainly from winner (glamour) stocks.

Contrarian Profits and the Overreaction Hypothesis: the Case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper investigates the existence of contrarian profits and their sources for the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The empirical analysis decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to common factor reactions, overreaction to firm-specific information, and profits not related to the previous two terms, as suggested by Jegadeesh and Titman (1995). Furthermore, in view of recent evidence that common stock returns are related to firm characteristics such as size and book-to-market equity, the paper decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to factors derived from the Fama and French (1993, 1996) three-factor model. For the empirical testing, size-sorted sub-samples that are rebalanced annually are employed, and in addition, adjustments for thin and infrequent trading are made to the data. The results indicate that serial correlation is present in equity returns and that it leads to significant short-run contrarian profits that persist even after we adjust for market frictions. Consistent with findings for the US market, contrarian profits decline as one moves from small stocks to large stocks, but only when market frictions are considered. Furthermore, the contribution to contrarian profits due to the overreaction to the firm-specific component appears larger than the underreaction to the common factors.

Sources of contrarian profits and return predictability in emerging markets

Acknowledging a gap in the literature, the study performs an investigation on short-term contrarian profits and their sources for the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The methodology is based on Jegadeesh and Titman (Review of Financial Studies, 8, 973–93, ); however, this paper employs annually rebalanced size-sorted subsamples instead of a one-off arrangement throughout the sample period. Other key contributions relate to: (a) testing the effect on the empirical results of the choice of an equally as opposed to a value weighted index as a proxy for the market portfolio, and (b) testing for the January effect following the ongoing discussion and disagreement in the literature on seasonality. Empirical findings suggest that short-run contrarian profits are present in the ASE. Furthermore, although both underreaction to common factors and overreaction to the firm-specific return component, appear to contribute to profits; the contribution of overreaction is much larger than that of underreaction. Not only so, but any contribution of the later is restricted to the month of January. Seasonality however has no effect on firm specific overreaction. The selection of a value weighted or an equally weighted index does not alter the main findings, and thus does not explain predictability for this market.

Short-term contrarian investing—is it profitable? … Yes and No

In this paper we investigate short-term contrarian investment strategies in the Australian stock market using weekly data of those stocks comprising the All Ordinaries Index during the period 1994–2001. We find both the (Rev. Financ. Stud. 3 (1990) 175) equal-weighted strategy and a new value-weighted strategy yield statistically significant short-term contrarian profits. Importantly, these observed profits could not be fully explained by measurement errors such as bid–ask bounce or by risk, seasonality or volume. Profits are largely related to firm size with overreaction to firm specific information being the primary source of short-term contrarian profits in Australia. However, when a ‘practical’ short-term contrarian strategy including reasonable transaction costs is implemented, all profits vanish. Thus, while the contrarian approach is not viable as a stand-alone strategy, we argue that it may in fact be value-enhancing when employed as an overlay strategy, particularly in the context of managed funds.

Are Contrarian Investment Strategies Profitable in the London Stock Exchange? Where do These Profits Come From?

Given the lack of evidence in the literature regarding UK short-term contrarian profits and their decomposition, this paper investigates the existence of contrarian profits for the London Stock Exchange (LSE), and decomposes them to sources due to common factors and to firm-specific news, building on the methodology of Jegadeesh and Titman (1995). Furthermore, in view of recent evidence that longer-term contrarian profits in the US are explained by firm characteristics such as size and book-to-market equity, the paper decomposes shorter-term contrarian profits to sources similar to the ones in the Fama and French (1996) three-factor model. For the empirical testing, size-sorted sub-samples that are rebalanced annually are used, and in addition, adjustments for infrequent trading and the Bid-Ask bias are made to the data. The results indicate that contrarian strategies are profitable for UK stocks and more pronounced for extreme market capitalization stocks (smallest - largest); the profits persist even after the sample is adjusted for market frictions, such as infrequent trading and bid-ask bias, and irrespective of whether raw or risk-adjusted returns are used to calculate them. Further tests indicate that the magnitude of the contribution of the delayed reactions to contrarian profits is small, while the magnitude of the contribution of investor overreaction to firm-specific information to profits is far larger (consistent with the findings of Jegadeesh and Titman 1995 for the US).

Asymmetric mean-reversion and contrarian profits: ANST-GARCH approach

This paper investigates the time-series evidence of asymmetric reverting patterns in stock returns that is attributable to “contrarian profitability.” Using asymmetric nonlinear smooth-transition (ANST) GARCH(M) models, we find that, for monthly excess returns of US market indexes over the period of 1926:01–1997:12, negative returns on average reverted more quickly, with a greater reverting magnitude, to positive returns than positive returns revert to negative returns. The results are quite consistent when the models are implemented not only for the different sample periods, such as 1926:01–1987:09 and 1947:01–1997:12, but also for portfolios with different characteristics, such as different firm-size portfolios and Fama–French risk-adjusted factor portfolios. We interpret the asymmetrical reversion as evidence of stock market overreaction.

Does Time Variation in Systematic Risk Affect the Profitability of Contrarian Investment Strategies?

Recent empirical studies seem to suggest that contrarian strategies make substantial profits that may be inconsistent with informationaly efficient markets. This paper examines whether the detection of contrarian profits is sensitive to the definition of abnormal returns and the duration of the formation and testing periods and investigates the effect of well-known monthly seasonals on the empirical results. Furthermore, in view of recent evidence that beta risk is not constant, the paper employs a procedure that allows for time-variation in systematic risk, and also examines whether abnormal returns of contrarian strategies are normal compensation for changes in risk between portfolio formation and portfolio testing period. No empirical evidence on contrarian profits exist so far for the Athens Stock Exchange, an emerging market for which one would expect more return predictability. To anticipate the results, we find that longer horizon contrarian strategies are more profitable than shorter horizon strategies. However, contrarian profits are very sensitive to the specification of abnormal returns, i.e. when we allow beta risk to vary over time most of the profits from contrarian strategies disappear. Furthermore, even for the case where we do detect arbitrage profits the results indicate that they may be due to changes in market risk.

Profitability of Contrarian vs Momentum Strategies: Evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange

Financial academics and practitioners have recognized that average stock returns are related to past performance and cross-section of stock returns is that predictable based on past returns. Number of researchers report that past losers (negative or lowest return-stocks) outperform past (positive or highest return-stocks) or vice versa over the subsequent three to five years not only in US markets but also in other stock markets. This study examines the momentum and contrarian effects on stock returns in one of the leading emerging markets, Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) between years 1991 and 2000 by using the same empirical methodology in Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). It also investigates the weak-form efficiency of the stock market by examining the profitability of a number of contrarian strategies based on past prices, size, price, book-to-market, earnings-to-price ratios of stocks. Prior loser-stocks are found to outperform prior winner-stocks consistent with the predictions of the overreaction hypothesis. Compounded annual return difference between the top-winners and top-losers is around 15% in favor of loser-stocks since the average return difference during the 10-year period is 1.14% per month. Empirical findings for the longer-term average returns up to 36 month holding periods reveal a reversal of returns from 15 months to 36 months. On the other hand, we find that average abnormal returns and the average abnormal return difference per month between losers and increase as the holding period extends. Results also indicate that there is a downward trend in average returns for the winner stocks based upon the length of past returns that is used for portfolio formation but upward trend for the losers. Profitability of the strategies is robust to changes in the size of the portfolios. We also find that contrarian profits in January are significantly higher than those in non-January months, particularly for the short-term holding periods such as one and three months, however, losers outperform the in most of the months of the year. The overreaction is significantly stronger for smaller firms than for larger firms. Losers portfolio are typically smaller, lower priced, high-B/M and high-E/P stocks (as distressed stocks) than stocks in the portfolio. Our evidence indicates that there is significant price, size, B/M and E/P effects in stock returns in ISE, consistent to previous empirical work. After we analyzed 80 different strategies based on five different factors such as past-return, size, price, B/M and E/P, in various length of formation and holding periods, we find that stocks that have lower price, smaller size, lower past-return, higher-B/M and E/P are significantly provide higher returns than others. Price, size and E/P-based portfolios earn a larger return than loser-winner portfolios suggested by the overreaction hypothesis. Large profits of winners&losers portfolios might be subsumed or caused by the other factors such as size, E/P and B/M effects. It might most probably be size-based phenomenon with the contribution of other factors. On the other hand, findings show that losers are riskier than the because they are more sensitive to all three Fama-French factors, however, significant contrarian profits are partially related with risk factors and not captured by the three-factor model of Fama and French. Large abnormal returns of winner and loser portfolios and overreaction effects might be explained only in part by the risk factors. Finally, our results show that contrarian effects or more specifically winners and losers effect are existing on stock returns in ISE and the contrarian trading strategies that is buying past losers and selling past realize significant abnormal profits to the investors consistent to DeBondt and Thaler (1985). However the evidence is also consistent with the overreaction and partially with the behavioral hypothesis and risk, reasons behind the profitability of the contrarian strategies needs to be scrutinized by using new explanatory risk factors and hypothesis.

Contrarian and momentum strategies in the China stock market: 1993–2000

Using data on “A” shares, accessible only to local investors in China, we find statistically significant abnormal profits for some short-horizon contrarian and intermediate-horizon momentum strategies. Further analysis indicates that: (1) overreaction to firm-specific information is the single most important source of short-term contrarian profits; (2) the intermediate-term momentum profits are not, however, distinct due to the dominance of overreaction effect; and (3) the negative cross-serial correlation contributes to momentum profits. The lead–lag structure in China is unique in that (i) lag firms follow lead firms in the opposite direction and (ii) large firms lead small firms in holding periods from 1 to 8 weeks, while small firms lead large firms in holding periods from 12 to 26 weeks. These findings are robust to bid–ask spread and nonsynchronous trading, time-varying market risk and firm-size effect.

The Winners and Losers Effect: Evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange

Financial academics and practitioners have recognized that average stock returns are related to past performance and cross-section of stock returns is that predictable based on past returns. Number of researchers report that past losers (negative or lowest return-stocks) outperform past winners (positive or highest return-stocks) or vice versa over the subsequent three to five years not only in US markets but also in other stock markets. This study examines the momentum and contrarian effects on stock returns in one of the leading emerging markets, Istanbul Stock Exchange between years 1991 and 2000 by using the same empirical methodology in Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). It also investigates the weak-form efficiency of the stock market by examining the profitability of a number of contrarian strategies based on past prices of stocks. Prior loser-stocks are found to outperform prior winner-stocks consistent with the predictions of the overreaction hypothesis. Compounded annual return difference between the top-winners and top-losers is around 15% in favor of loser-stocks since the average return difference during the 10-year period is 1.14% per month. Empirical findings for the longer-term average returns such as 24 and 36 month holding periods reveal a reversal of returns from one to three years. On the other hand, we find that average abnormal returns per month and the average abnormal return difference between losers and winners increase as the holding period extends. Results also indicate that there is a downward trend in average returns based upon the length of past returns that is used in the strategy for the winner stocks but upward trend for the losers. The gap between losers and winners increases in favor of losers increases as goes back and the effect of length of past returns on holding period return seems to be more important than that of the length of holding period (K). Profitability of the strategies is robust to changes in the size of the portfolios. We also find that contrarian profits in January are significantly higher than those in non-January months, particularly for the strategies which are based on relatively shorter holding periods such as one and three months. Persistently, losers earn large January returns which are significantly higher than those of winners. Finally, our results show that contrarian effects or more specifically 'winners and losers effect' are existing on stock returns in the Istanbul Stock Exchange and the contrarian trading strategies that is buying past losers and selling past winners realize significant abnormal profits to the investors. The evidence is consistent with the overreaction and partially with the behavioral hypotheses.

Contrarian Profits and the Overreaction Hypothesis: The Case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper investigates the existence of contrarian profits and their sources for the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The empirical analysis decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to common factor reactions, overreaction to firm-specific information, and profits not related to the previous two terms, as suggested by Jegadeesh and Titman (1995). Furthermore, in view of recent evidence that common stock returns are related to firm characteristics such as size and book-to-market equity, the paper decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to factors derived from the Fama and French (1993, 1996) three-factor model. For the empirical testing, size-sorted sub-samples that are rebalanced annually are employed, and in addition, adjustments for thin and infrequent trading are made to the data. The results indicate that serial correlation is present in equity returns and that it leads to significant short-run contrarian profits that persist even after we adjust for market frictions. Consistent with findings for the US market, contrarian profits decline as one moves from small stocks to large stocks, but only when market frictions are considered. Furthermore, the contribution to contrarian profits due to the overreaction to the firm-specific component appears larger than the underreaction to the common factors.