Momentum Profits Research Articles

Momentum Strategies in Shari’ah-Compliant Stocks: The Role of Debt

This article examines whether investors can execute profitable momentum strategies using Shari’ah-compliant stocks to enhance returns. We find no significant profits from either the traditional return-based momentum strategy or the turnover-based momentum strategy for Shari’ah-compliant stocks from 1996 to 2009. Such nonexistence of momentum profits for Islamic equities can be attributed to their low level of debt, higher level of transparency, and the endorsement effect from the Shari’ah independent supervisory board. Our results are consistent with the credit-rating hypothesis in Avramov et al. [2007] that low-credit firms drive momentum profits.

The Formation Process of Winners and Losers in Momentum Investing

Previous studies have focused on which stocks are winners or losers but have paid little attention to the formation process of past returns. This paper develops a model showing that past returns and the formation process of past returns have a joint effect on future expected returns. The empirical evidence shows that the zero-investment portfolio, including stocks with specific patterns of historical prices, improves monthly momentum profit by 59%. Overall, the process of how one stock becomes a winner or loser can further distinguish the best and worst stocks in a group of winners or losers.

Did the Profitability of Momentum and Reversal Strategies Decline with Arbitrage Costs After the Turn of the Millennium?

This article investigates the issue of whether major developments in U.S. stock markets around the turn of the millennium reduced arbitrage costs, and consequently the profitability of momentum, long-term reversal, and short-term reversal strategies. Evidence for the years 1990 to 2013 is generally consistent with these predictions, though effects of the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 are also evident.

Momentum strategies with stock index exchange-traded funds

Previously reported momentum profits may not be available to individual investors who have more trading constraints. Therefore, I examine the profitability of momentum strategies with international iShares and US sector exchange-traded funds (ETFs) traded on the NYSE. The index ETFs provide individual investors easy access to international stock markets and US sectors for asset allocations. Using cross-sectional momentum strategies, in contrast to prior research, I find that momentum profits are insignificant for the late 1990s–2014 period. Few country and industry ETFs yield positive results using time series momentum, and the overall performance is worse than the buy-and-hold strategy. Time series momentum offers significant profits during the 2008 global financial crisis, but the profits decline sharply for the post-crisis period.

Short-Term Momentum Effect: a Case of Middle East Stock Markets

The objective of this paper is to find short-term momentum effect in stock markets of the Middle East and to examine whether short-term momentum profits can be explained by risk-based CAPM model. Seven major stock markets from the Middle East were selected. Short-term momentum effect was found in all seven stock markets and CAPM does not adequately explain the short-term momentum profits but momentum portfolio returns are statistically significant. This paper is first attempt to bring major stock markets of the Middle East together and examine them for the short term momentum effect phenomenon. Future research should include more stock markets in order to have a better understanding of Middle Eastern stock markets.

Abandonment Options: Implications for Stock Returns and Momentum Profits

We develop a firm valuation model with repeated expansion and contraction options to show operating profitability is a proxy for time-varying systematic risk. Relative to riskier assets, the proportionate value of contraction options increase as profitability falls, lowering the firm beta. Consistent with the predictions, operating profitability relates positively to stock betas and stock returns, and momentum strategies yield higher returns if constructed from past winners and losers with diverging operating profitability. Corroborating a risk-based explanation, the momentum results remain unexplained by, among other things, empirical measures for information diffusion, information uncertainty, credit risk and financial distress.

Another Look at Momentum Crashes

This paper studies the profitability of a selection of prominent momentum-based strategies in the European Monetary Union. In contrast to past examples documenting the lack of profitability of unconditional price momentum in the most recent decade, the current research finds that unconditional price momentum yielded significant positive payoffs. There is evidence of option-like behavior for strategies based on intermediate past performance. Surprisingly, there is no such evidence for the momentum strategy based on recent past performance .

Momentum Loses its Momentum: Implications for Market Efficiency

We evaluate the robustness of momentum returns in the US stock market over the period 1965 to 2010. We find that momentum profits have become insignificant since the late 1990s partially driven by pronounced increase in the volatility of momentum profits in the last 12 years. Past returns no longer explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns, not even following up markets. The patterns in the post holding period returns of momentum portfolios and risk adjusted identification period buy and hold returns of stocks in momentum supports improvement in market efficiency as a possible explanation for the declining momentum profits.

Profitability of time series momentum

Abstract We propose a continuous-time heterogeneous agent model consisting of fundamental, momentum, and contrarian traders to explain the significant time series momentum. We show that the performance of momentum strategy is determined by both time horizon and the market dominance of momentum traders. Specifically, when momentum traders are more active in the market, momentum strategies with short (long) time horizons stabilize (destabilize) the market, and meanwhile the market under-reacts (over-reacts) in short-run (long-run). This provides profit opportunity for time series momentum strategies with short horizons and reversal with long horizons. When momentum traders are less active in the market, they always lose. The results provide an insight into the profitability of time series momentum documented in recent empirical studies.

Seasonality in Momentum Profits: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market

The paper investigates Indian momentum profitability along with its performance stability round the year using the stock price data from National Stock Exchange (NSE). Results show evidence in favour of momentum profitability over the sample period from 1997 to 2013. Moreover, the momentum performance is not specific to any particular month suggesting no influence of calendar on momentum anomaly in the Indian stock market, though momentum strategies performed differently in different calendar months, with particularly strong negative returns in the month of May. However, no statistically significant difference was observed among the mean monthly momentum returns across calendar months. Contrary to the US market findings, no January or similar April seasonality is observed in the Indian momentum profits suggesting some unique characteristics of Indian momentum profitability. In nutshell, the results from the study suggest support in favour of practical implementation of momentum strategies throughout the year in the Indian stock market.

CAN MOMENTUM PORTFOLIOS EARN MORE IN THE KARACHI STOCK EXCHANGE

In this study, we attempt to show empirical evidence of momentum profits in Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) using monthly stocks returns data of 609 stocks over the period June 2004 to March 2014. Using Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) methodology, we find that investors can earn positive returns by holding a zero-investment momentum portfolio i.e. buying past winners stocks and selling past losers stocks. These results are robust to excluding small stocks (share price< PKR 5) as well as to using different sample periods. Further research in this area might consider factors such as risk, size, liquidity, book-to-market value, transaction costs, and trading volume to see which of these factors can explain momentum profits in KSE.

Momentum Life Cycle Around the World

The momentum life cycle (MLC) hypothesis first proposed by Lee and Swaminathan (2000) applies also to global markets. Early-stage strategies significantly outperform the late-stage and conventional strategies in most countries. Individualism culture is positively associated with late-stage but unrelated to early-stage momentum profitability, suggesting that early- and late-stage momentums are driven by different underlying mechanisms. Consistent with Stein’s (2009) model that arbitrageurs could amplify mispricing, we find that late-stage momentum profits are more pronounced in countries with lower limits to arbitrage. Furthermore, we find that the MLC also applies to exchange traded funds in the United States.

Momentum in Imperial Russia

Some of the leading theories of momentum have different empirical predictions about its profitability conditional on market composition and structure. The overconfidence explanation provided by Daniel, Hirshleifer, and Subrahmanyam (1998), for example, predicts lower momentum profits in markets with more sophisticated investors. The information-based theory of Hong and Stein (1999) predicts lower momentum profits in markets with lower informational frictions. The institutional theory of Vayanos and Woolley (2013) predicts lower momentum profits in markets with less agency. In this paper, we use a dataset from a major 19th century equity market to test these predictions. Over this period, there was no evidence of delegated management in Imperial Russia. A regulatory change in 1893 made speculating on the St. Petersburg stock market more accessible to small investors. We find a momentum effect that is similar in magnitude to those in modern markets and stronger during the post-1893 period than during the pre-1893 period, consistent with the overconfidence theory of momentum.

New evidence on determinants of price momentum in the Japanese stock market

We investigate the cross section momentum effect in the Japanese stock market over the period January 1997 to December 2013, sub-periods before August 2008 and during the crisis September 2008–2009. From previous studies, it follows that the Japanese market is the exception to the findings on developed capital markets (momentum effect does not occur or is weak). Our study highlights the limitation of standard notions; we document the conditional nature of momentum and identify the characteristics of companies and their stocks and market states, allowing investors to earn positive momentum profit in the Japanese market (the statistically significant positive monthly return of zero cost portfolios is not less than 1%). It is shown that investors should take into account the seasonal pattern (for the Japanese stocks this revealed two months when we do not recommend taking investment activity) to increase portfolio profits. We explain the results from the specifics of the Japanese financial and governance systems, the ownership structure of listed Japanese firms and socio-cultural factors.

Presence and Sources of Contrarian and Momentum Profits in Bangladesh Stock Market Returns

Purpose –Two most well-known return regularities are contrarian and momentum profits. This paper, using weekly data for the period 2002 through 2013, investigates the presence of both contrarian and momentum profits and their sources in the Bangladeshi stock market.Design/methodology/approach – The paper follows the methodology of Lo and MacKinlay (1990) to form portfolios with a weighted relative strength scheme. Methodology of Jegadeesh and Titman (1995) is used to decompose the contrarian/momentum profits into three elements: compensation for cross-sectional risk, lead-lag effect in time series with respect to the common factor, and time series pattern of stock returns. Robustness of results is checked by considering market risk factors.Findings – Results provide the evidence of significant contrarian profits for the holding period of one through eight weeks. There is stronger presence of contrarian profits during 2002-08. Time series pattern is found to be the main source of contrarian profits, suggesting that idiosyncratic (firm-specific) information is the main contributor to contrarian profits. Interestingly, the influence of idiosyncratic information on such profits has gradually decreased since 2008. Contrarian profits are robust to market sentiment and other systematic risk factors.Originality/value – This is the first detailed study on the presence of contrarian and momentum profits and their sources in the Bangladesh stock market. More specifically, no previous study has focused on sources of such profits, although it is an important issue as far as market efficiency is concerned.

A Model of Momentum and Market States: Theory and Evidence

We develop a model to connect market states and momentum profits, and test the model's empirical implications. The model analyzes the asset pricing implications of overconfidence and self-attribution bias, in a setting of multiple risky assets whose payoffs contain a common factor. A novel insight from the model is that overconfidence can vary asymmetrically between winners and losers, which leads to asymmetric return behaviors between winners and losers. The model generates a set of implications regarding the relation between market states and returns on the winner, loser, and momentum portfolios. These implications are supported by empirical analysis.

Time-varying expected momentum profits

This paper examines the time variations of expected momentum profits using a two-state Markov switching model with time-varying transition probabilities to evaluate the empirical relevance of recent rational theories of momentum profits. We find that in the expansion state the expected returns of winner stocks are more affected by aggregate economic conditions than those of loser stocks, while in the recession state the expected returns of loser stocks are more affected than those of winner stocks. Consequently, expected momentum profits display strong procyclical variations. We argue that the observed momentum profits are the realization of such expected returns and can be interpreted as the procyclicality premium. We provide a plausible explanation for time-varying momentum profits through the differential effect of leverage and growth options across business cycles.

Momentum is really short-term momentum

We demonstrate the estimation biases that arise when stock returns from 12month prior and 2month prior are included within intermediate and recent past momentum profits. These biases lead to an overestimation of intermediate past momentum but an underestimation of recent past momentum in the US market. There is no significant difference between the predictability of stock performance in the intermediate past and the recent past once we exclude these two months from the construction of momentum strategies in the US and each of the 26 major international markets.

Product Market Momentum

We test the hypothesis that product market shocks to less-visible text-based industry peers can explain momentum and long-term reversals. We examine industry peer firms identified through common product text and focus on less-visible industry peers that do not share common SIC codes. Shocks to less visible peers generate economically large momentum profits, and are stronger than own-firm momentum variables. More visible traditional SIC-based peers generate only small, short-lived momentum profits. Subsequent long-term reversals only occur when the return-differential between more and less visible peers becomes large. Our findings suggest that momentum is driven by inattention to less visible horizontal peers.

How do momentum strategies ‘score’ against individual investors in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea?

We compare the momentum strategies to “naive” uninformed strategies in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea. The high participation of individual investors in these economies makes it an ideal setting to use the score function proposed by Banerjee and Hung (BH, 2011). As in BH we find that the average scores of the momentum profits in these markets are close to zero. In contrast to BH's finding that in the U.S. market the winner stocks get significantly positive scores, we find that in all the three markets the scores of the winner portfolio are statistically insignificant.