IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fma/fmanag/bessembinder98.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Market Efficiency and the Returns to Technical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik Bessembinder
  • Kalok Chan

Abstract

Can technical analysis be used to forecast price changes in fianncial markets> Until 1992, that question was answered with a resounding "no." This paper presents additional empirical evidence that simple technical rules do possess statistically different forecast power. However, the returns do not appear large enough to outweigh the trading costs involved.

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik Bessembinder & Kalok Chan, 1998. "Market Efficiency and the Returns to Technical Analysis," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 27(2), Summer.
    • Handle: RePEc:fma:fmanag:bessembinder98
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sweeney, Richard J, 1986. "Beating the Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 163-182, March.
    2. Scholes, Myron & Williams, Joseph, 1977. "Estimating betas from nonsynchronous data," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 309-327, December.
    3. Stoll, Hans R. & Whaley, Robert E., 1983. "Transaction costs and the small firm effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 57-79, June.
    4. Neely, Christopher & Weller, Paul & Dittmar, Rob, 1997. "Is Technical Analysis in the Foreign Exchange Market Profitable? A Genetic Programming Approach," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 405-426, December.
    5. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F, 1996. "On the Predictability of Stock Returns: An Asset-Allocation Perspective," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 385-424, June.
    6. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    7. Jensen, Michael C & Bennington, George A, 1970. "Random Walks and Technical Theories: Some Additional Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 469-482, May.
    8. Gray, Philip K & Gray, Stephen F, 1997. "Testing Market Efficiency: Evidence from the NFL Sports Betting Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1725-1737, September.
    9. Bessembinder, Hendrik & Chan, Kalok, 1995. "The profitability of technical trading rules in the Asian stock markets," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 3(2-3), pages 257-284, July.
    10. Knez, Peter J & Ready, Mark J, 1996. "Estimating the Profits from Trading Strategies," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(4), pages 1121-1163.
    11. Blume, Lawrence & Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1994. "Market Statistics and Technical Analysis: The Role of Volume," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 153-181, March.
    12. Chan, Louis K. C. & Lakonishok, Josef, 1993. "Institutional trades and intraday stock price behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-199, April.
    13. Golec, Joseph & Tamarkin, Maurry, 1991. "The degree of inefficiency in the football betting market : Statistical tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 311-323, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Rink, 2023. "The predictive ability of technical trading rules: an empirical analysis of developed and emerging equity markets," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 37(4), pages 403-456, December.
    2. Taylor, Mark & Hsu, Po-Hsuan, 2014. "Forty Years, Thirty Currencies and 21,000 Trading Rules: A Large-scale, Data-Snooping Robust Analysis of Technical Trading in t," CEPR Discussion Papers 10018, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    4. Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Taylor, Mark P. & Wang, Zigan, 2016. "Technical trading: Is it still beating the foreign exchange market?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 188-208.
    5. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    6. Skouras, Spyros, 2001. "Financial returns and efficiency as seen by an artificial technical analyst," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 213-244, January.
    7. Wong, Wing-Keung & Du, Jun & Chong, Terence Tai-Leung, 2005. "Do the technical indicators reward chartists? A study on the stock markets of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan," Review of Applied Economics, Lincoln University, Department of Financial and Business Systems, vol. 1(2), pages 1-23.
    8. Walid Omrane & Hervé Oppens, 2006. "The performance analysis of chart patterns: Monte Carlo simulation and evidence from the euro/dollar foreign exchange market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 947-971, January.
    9. BEN OMRANE, Walid & VAN OPPEN, Hervé, 2004. "The predictive success and profitability of chart patterns in the Euro/Dollar foreign exchange market," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2004035, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    10. Zakamulin, Valeriy, 2013. "Forecasting the size premium over different time horizons," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1061-1072.
    11. Wang, Zi-Mei & Chiao, Chaoshin & Chang, Ya-Ting, 2012. "Technical analyses and order submission behaviors: Evidence from an emerging market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 109-128.
    12. Cheol‐Ho Park & Scott H. Irwin, 2007. "What Do We Know About The Profitability Of Technical Analysis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 786-826, September.
    13. Marshall, Ben R. & Cahan, Rochester H., 2005. "Is technical analysis profitable on a stock market which has characteristics that suggest it may be inefficient?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 384-398, September.
    14. Lukas Menkhoff & Mark P. Taylor, 2007. "The Obstinate Passion of Foreign Exchange Professionals: Technical Analysis," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(4), pages 936-972, December.
    15. Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Hsu, Yu-Chin & Kuan, Chung-Ming, 2010. "Testing the predictive ability of technical analysis using a new stepwise test without data snooping bias," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 471-484, June.
    16. Afiruddin Tapa* & Mohd Hasimi Yaacob & Ahmad Husni Hamzah & Yean Soh Chuen, 2018. "Trading Performance Analysis: A Comparisons Between the Original MA Crossover and Modified MA Crossover Strategy," The Journal of Social Sciences Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, pages 933-941:6.
    17. Osman Kilic & Joseph M. Marks & Kiseok Nam, 2022. "Predictable asset price dynamics, risk-return tradeoff, and investor behavior," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 749-791, August.
    18. Zhu, Yingzi & Zhou, Guofu, 2009. "Technical analysis: An asset allocation perspective on the use of moving averages," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 519-544, June.
    19. Stefanescu, Răzvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2015. "Buy and sell signals on Bucharest Stock Exchange," MPRA Paper 89014, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Jan 2016.
    20. Paskalis Glabadanidis, 2017. "Timing the Market with a Combination of Moving Averages," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 353-394, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fma:fmanag:bessembinder98. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Courtney Connors (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fmaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.