Asymmetric return dynamics and technical trading strategies [An article from: Journal of Banking and Finance]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Banking and Finance, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
We investigate the profitability of technical trading strategies based on an asymmetric reverting property of stock returns. We identify an asymmetry in return dynamics for daily returns on the S&P 500 index. Return dynamics evolve along a positive (negative) unconditional mean after a prior positive (negative) return. The trading strategies based on this asymmetry generate a positive return for buy signals, a negative return for sell signals, and a positive return for the spread between buy and sell signals. Our results imply that the observed asymmetry in return dynamics is the main source of profitability for the implied strategies, thereby corroborating arguments for the usefulness of technical trading strategies.