A Reality Check on Technical Trading Rule Profits in US Futures Markets

This paper investigates the profitability of technical trading rules in US futures markets over the 1985-2004 period. To account for data snooping biases, we evaluate statistical significance of performance across technical trading rules using White's Bootstrap Reality Check test and Hansen's Superior Predictive Ability test. These methods directly quantify the effect of data snooping by testing the performance of the best rule in the context of the full universe of technical trading rules. Results show that the best rules generate statistically significant economic profits only for two of 17 futures contracts traded in the US. This evidence indicates that technical trading rules generally have not been profitable in US futures markets after correcting for data snooping biases.Marketing,

CAN STRUCTURAL CHANGE EXPLAIN THE DECREASE IN RETURNS TO TECHNICAL ANALYSIS?

Practioners Abstract: Returns to managed futures funds and Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) have decreased dramatically during the last several years. Since these funds overwhelmingly use technical analysis, this research examines futures prices to determine if there is evidence of a structural change in futures price movements that could explain the reduction in fund returns. Bootstrap tests are used to test significance of a change in statistics related to daily returns, close-to-open changes, breakaway gaps, and serial correlation. Results indicate that several statistics have changed across a broad range of commodities indicating futures price fluctuations have changed. The lower price volatility, decreased price reaction time, and decreased serial correlation may partly explain the lower returns from technical analysis.Marketing,

Technical analysis in the foreign exchange market

This article introduces the subject of technical analysis in the foreign exchange market, with emphasis on its importance for questions of market efficiency. Technicians view their craft, the study of price patterns, as exploiting traders’ psychological regularities. The literature on technical analysis has established that simple technical trading rules on dollar exchange rates provided 15 years of positive, risk-adjusted returns during the 1970s and 80s before those returns were extinguished. More recently, more complex and less studied rules have produced more modest returns for a similar length of time. Conventional explanations that rely on risk adjustment and/or central bank intervention are not plausible justifications for the observed excess returns from following simple technical trading rules. Psychological biases, however, could contribute to the profitability of these rules. We view the observed pattern of excess returns to technical trading rules as being consistent with an adaptive markets view of the world.Foreign exchange rates

Agriculture as an asset class: reshaping the South African farming sector

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Determinants of power spreads in electricity futures markets: A multinational analysis. ESRI WP580, December 2017

The growth in variable renewable energy (vRES) and the need for flexibility in power systems go hand in hand. We study how vRES and other factors, namely the price of substitute fuels, power price volatility, structural breaks, and seasonality impact the hedgeable power spreads (profit margins) of the main dispatchable flexibility providers in the current power systems - gas and coal power plants. We particularly focus on power spreads that are hedgeable in futures markets in three European electricity markets (Germany, UK, Nordic) over the time period 2009-2016. We find that market participants who use power spreads need to pay attention to the fundamental supply and demand changes in the underlying markets (electricity, CO2, and coal/gas). Specifically, we show that the total vRES capacity installed during 2009-2016 is associated with a drop of 3-22% in hedgeable profit margins of coal and especially gas power generators. While this shows that the expansion of vRES has a significant negative effect on the hedgeable profitability of dispatchable, flexible power generators, it also suggests that the overall decline in power spreads is further driven by the price dynamics in the CO2 and fuel markets during the sample period. We also find significant persistence (and asymmetric effects) in the power spreads volatility using a univariate TGARCH model

Modified moving-average crossover trading strategy: evidence in Malaysia equity market

This study examine the profitability of technical analysis using the most renowned trendfollowing tool, the original moving-average (MA) crossover strategy, to compare with the conventional simple buy-and-hold strategy, using the evidence from Malaysia equity market the FBMKLCI Index from 2000 to 2014. Specifically, this study investigates the performance of the original moving-average strategy and a modified moving-average crossover strategy with additional trading rules such as entry rule, exit rule, holding rule, and stop-loss rule. The results in this study are consistent to past studies that stronglysupport moving-average crossover trading strategies. The result here suggests that all combinations of short-MA and long-MA periods of the original MA crossover strategy and majority combinations of short-MA and long-MA of the modified MA crossover strategy outperform market benchmark with higher risk-adjusted return. In addition, the 1-period short-MA demonstrates the best return in both original and modified moving-average crossover strategy; better still the modified strategy outperforms the original strategy with lower frequency of trades which could largely reduce transaction costs and with lower return distribution variability

Economic significance of market timing rules in the Forward Freight Agreement markets

Quantitative market timing strategies have been traditionally tested in liquid commodity and financial futures, often with mixed results with respect to their performance. We extend this methodology to a non-storable commodity, freight, where hitherto this analysis has not been carried out. The freight futures market is mature and increasingly liquid, making it a good case for diversification and trading opportunities. We carry out a comprehensive study of quantitative trading strategies in the FFA (Forward Freight Agreements) market on a wide variety of contracts and maturities with a number of trading rules. We find that in spite of robustness checks, trading rules do outperform the buy-and-hold benchmark in general. We also explore the possibility that illiquidity and a small sample size may impact the results of the tests and therefore offer an intuitive approach to mitigate their effects. A procedure that augments the Hansen (2005) SPA (Superior Predictive Ability) methodology and allows us to use it for smaller sample sizes with increased confidence is also proposed

Technical trading and cryptocurrencies

This paper carries out a comprehensive examination of technical trading rules in cryptocurrency markets, using data from two Bitcoin markets and three other popular cryptocurrencies. We employ almost 15,000 technical trading rules from the main five classes of technical trading rules and find significant predictability and profitability for each class of technical trading rule in each cryptocurrency. We find that the breakeven transaction costs are substantially higher than those typically found in cryptocurrency markets. To safeguard against data-snooping, we implement a number of multiple hypothesis procedures which confirms our findings that technical trading rules do offer significant predictive power and profitability to investors. We also show that the technical trading rules offer substantially higher risk-adjusted returns than the simple buy-and-hold strategy, showing protection against lengthy and severe drawdowns associated with cryptocurrency markets. However there is no predictability for Bitcoin in the out-of-sample period, although predictability remains in other cryptocurrency markets

An empirical investigation of technical analysis in fixed income markets

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of technical analytic indicators in the fixed income markets. Technical analysis is a widely used methodology by investors in the equity and foreign exchange markets, but the empirical evidence on the profltability of technical trading systems in the bond markets is sparse. Therefore, this thesis serves as a coherent and systematic examination of technical trading systems in the government bond futures and bond yield markets. We investigate three aspects of technical analysis. First, we evaluate the profitability of 7,991 technical trading systems in eight bond futures contracts. Our results provide mixed conclusions on the profitability these technical systems, since the results vary across different futures markets, even adjusting for data snooping effects and transaction costs. In addition, we find the profitability of the trading systems has declined in recent periods. Second, we examine the informativeness of technical chart patterns in the government benchmark bond yield and yield spread markets. We apply the nonparametric regression methodology, including the Nadaraya-Watson and local polynomial regression, to identify twelve chart patterns commonly taught by chartists. The empirical results show no incremental information are contained within these chart patterns that investors can systematically exploit to earn excess returns. Furthermore, we find that bond yield spreads are fundamentally different to price series such as equity prices or currencies. Lastly, we categorize and evaluate five type of price gaps in the financial markets for the first time. We apply our price gap categorisation to twenty-eight futures contracts. Our results support the Gap- Fill hypothesis and find that some price gaps may provide additional information to investors by exhibiting returns that are statistically different to the unconditional returns over a short period of time. ՝In conclusion, this thesis provides empirical evidence that broadly support the usage of technical analysis in the financial markets

Evaluation of the Profitability of Technical Analysis for Asian Currencies in the Forex Spot Market for Short-Term Trading

Technical analysis has garnered an unprecedented amount of interest among short-term traders in the Forex spot market over the past couple of decades. The main purpose of this study is to examine the profitability of technical analysis as applied to three active Asian currencies in the Forex spot market for short-term trading. This study also tests the relationship between various related parameters of currency trading such as Maximum Drawdown, Time in Position, Dealt Lots, Trading Charges and profitability. It covers ten currency pairs, including ten foreign exchange rates of three active Asian currencies in the Forex spot market (the Japanese Yen, Singaporean dollar, and Hong Kong dollar), five time frames involving Intra-day timeframes, and ten technical indicators (5 leading and 5 lagging). The study covers a period of three months running from April 10, 2012 through July 10, 2012. The results indicate that technical analysis is profitable for Asian currencies as attested by the fact that all the currency pairs, time frames and indicators have yielded trading profits in the Forex spot market