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Are technical trading rules profitable? Evidence for head-and-shoulder rules

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  • Bernd Lucke

Abstract

The profitability of chartist trading rules on foreign exchange markets is still under debate. Since simple technical trading rules may not adequately capture the complex phenomenon of chartist trading, this study focuses on the prominent head-and-shoulder pattern as a representative trading rule which incorporates various 'technical' ideas such as smoothed trends, trend reversal, resistance levels, and volatility clustering. For various combinations of the building blocks of head-and-shoulder definitions the result is generally negative: Returns to head-and-shoulder trading rules are not significantly positive - and if there is any evidence for non-zero returns at all, then it is evidence for negative returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernd Lucke, 2003. "Are technical trading rules profitable? Evidence for head-and-shoulder rules," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 33-40.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:35:y:2003:i:1:p:33-40
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840210150884
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    Cited by:

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    2. Guanqing Liu, 2019. "Technical Trading Behaviour: Evidence from Chinese Rebar Futures Market," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(2), pages 669-704, August.
    3. Shan Wang & Zhi-Qiang Jiang & Sai-Ping Li & Wei-Xing Zhou, 2015. "Testing the performance of technical trading rules in the Chinese market," Papers 1504.06397, arXiv.org.
    4. Yung-Ho Chang & Massoud Metghalchi & Chia-Chung Chan, 2006. "Technical trading strategies and cross-national information linkage: the case of Taiwan stock market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(10), pages 731-743.
    5. Lukas Menkhoff & Ulrich Schmidt, 2005. "The use of trading strategies by fund managers: some first survey evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(15), pages 1719-1730.
    6. Maxime Charlebois & Stephen Sapp, 2007. "Temporal Patterns in Foreign Exchange Returns and Options," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2‐3), pages 443-470, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Alvarez-Ramirez, Jose & Fernandez-Anaya, Guillermo & Ibarra-Valdez, Carlos, 2004. "Some issues on the stability of trading based on technical analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 337(3), pages 609-624.
    9. Maxime Charlebois & Stephen Sapp, 2007. "Temporal Patterns in Foreign Exchange Returns and Options," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2-3), pages 443-470, March.
    10. Metghalchi, Massoud & Chen, Chien-Ping & Hayes, Linda A., 2015. "History of share prices and market efficiency of the Madrid general stock index," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 178-184.
    11. 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.
    12. Dockery, Everton & Todorov, Ivan, 2023. "Further evidence on the returns to technical trading rules: Insights from fourteen currencies," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).

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