IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wfo/wpaper/y2008i323.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Profitability of Technical Stock Trading: Has it Moved from Daily to Intraday Data?

Author

Listed:
  • Stephan Schulmeister

Abstract

This paper investigates how technical trading systems exploit the momentum and reversal effects in the S&P 500 spot and futures market. When based on daily data, the profitability of 2,580 technical models has steadily declined since 1960, and has been unprofitable since the early 1990s. However, when based on 30-minutes data the same models produce an average gross return of 7.2 percent per year between 1983 and 2007. These results do not change substantially when trading is tested over eight subperiods. In particular, there is no clear trend of a declining profitability of technical stock trading based on 30-minutes data. Those 25 models which performed best over the most recent subperiod produce a significantly higher gross return over the subsequent subperiod than all models. Between 2001 and 2007 the 2,580 models perform worse than over the 1980s and 1990s. This result could be due to stock markets becoming more efficient recently or to stock price trends shifting from 30-minutes prices to prices of higher frequencies.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephan Schulmeister, 2008. "Profitability of Technical Stock Trading: Has it Moved from Daily to Intraday Data?," WIFO Working Papers 323, WIFO.
  • Handle: RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2008:i:323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/32880
    File Function: abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goldberg, Michael & Schulmeister, Stephen, 1988. "Technical Analysis And Stock Market Efficiency," Working Papers 88-21, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    2. Chang, P H Kevin & Osler, Carol L, 1999. "Methodical Madness: Technical Analysis and the Irrationality of Exchange-Rate Forecasts," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(458), pages 636-661, October.
    3. Hudson, Robert & Dempsey, Michael & Keasey, Kevin, 1996. "A note on the weak form efficiency of capital markets: The application of simple technical trading rules to UK stock prices - 1935 to 1994," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 1121-1132, July.
    4. Thomas Gehrig & Lukas Menkhoff, 2005. "The Rise of Fund Managers in Foreign Exchange:Will Fundamentals Ultimately Dominate?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 519-540, April.
    5. Park, Cheol-Ho & Irwin, Scott H., 2004. "The Profitability of Technical Analysis: A Review," AgMAS Project Research Reports 37487, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    6. Yin-Wong Cheung & Menzie D. Chinn & Ian W. Marsh, 2004. "How do UK-based foreign exchange dealers think their market operates?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(4), pages 289-306.
    7. Bertrand Maillet & Thierry Michel, 2000. "Further insights on the puzzle of technical analysis profitability," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 196-224.
    8. Andrew W. Lo & Harry Mamaysky & Jiang Wang, 2000. "Foundations of Technical Analysis: Computational Algorithms, Statistical Inference, and Empirical Implementation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1705-1770, August.
    9. Ryan Sullivan & Allan Timmermann & Halbert White, 1999. "Data‐Snooping, Technical Trading Rule Performance, and the Bootstrap," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1647-1691, October.
    10. Stephan Schulmeister, 2002. "Technical Trading Systems and Stock Price Dynamics," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 23373, Juni.
    11. LeBaron, Blake, 1999. "Technical trading rule profitability and foreign exchange intervention," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 125-143, October.
    12. Goetzmann, William N. & Massa, Massimo, 2002. "Daily Momentum and Contrarian Behavior of Index Fund Investors," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(3), pages 375-389, September.
    13. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2006. "The interaction between technical currency trading and exchange rate fluctuations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 212-233, September.
    14. Stephan Schulmeister, 1988. "Currency speculation and dollar fluctuations," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 41(167), pages 343-365.
    15. Park, Cheol-Ho & Irwin, Scott H., 2004. "The Profitability Of Technical Trading Rules In Us Futures Markets: A Data Snooping Free Test," 2004 Conference, April 19-20, 2004, St. Louis, Missouri 19011, NCR-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management.
    16. Stephan Schulmeister, 2008. "Components of the profitability of technical currency trading," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(11), pages 917-930.
    17. Okunev, John & White, Derek, 2003. "Do Momentum-Based Strategies Still Work in Foreign Currency Markets?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 425-447, June.
    18. Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "The Interaction Between the Aggregate Behaviour of Technical Trading Systems and Stock Price Dynamics," WIFO Working Papers 290, WIFO.
    19. Neely, Christopher J. & Weller, Paul A., 1999. "Technical trading rules in the European Monetary System," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 429-458.
    20. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    21. Lo, Andrew W & MacKinlay, A Craig, 1990. "When Are Contrarian Profits Due to Stock Market Overreaction?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(2), pages 175-205.
    22. Fernando Fernández-Rodríguez & Christian González-Martel & Simón Sosvilla-Rivero, "undated". "Optimisation of Technical Rules by Genetic Algorithms: Evidence from the Madrid Stock Market," Working Papers 2001-14, FEDEA.
    23. Stephan Schulmeister, 2008. "Profitability of Technical Currency Speculation. The Case of Yen-Dollar Trading 1976-2007," WIFO Working Papers 325, WIFO.
    24. Oberlechner, Thomas, 2001. "Importance of Technical and Fundamental Analysis in the European Foreign Exchange Market," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(1), pages 81-93, January.
    25. Olson, Dennis, 2004. "Have trading rule profits in the currency markets declined over time?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 85-105, January.
    26. Gunasekarage, Abeyratna & Power, David M., 2001. "The profitability of moving average trading rules in South Asian stock markets," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 17-33, March.
    27. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard H, 1987. "Further Evidence on Investor Overreaction and Stock Market Seasonalit y," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 557-581, July.
    28. Neely, C. J. & Weller, P. A., 2003. "Intraday technical trading in the foreign exchange market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 223-237, April.
    29. L. Menkhoff & M. Schlumberger, 1995. "Persistent profitability of technical analysis on foreign exchange markets?," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 48(193), pages 189-215.
    30. Levich, Richard M. & Thomas, Lee III, 1993. "The significance of technical trading-rule profits in the foreign exchange market: a bootstrap approach," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 451-474, October.
    31. Gehrig, Thomas & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2004. "The use of flow analysis in foreign exchange: exploratory evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 573-594, June.
    32. Carol L. Osler, 2000. "Support for resistance: technical analysis and intraday exchange rates," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jul, pages 53-68.
    33. Wing-Keung Wong & Meher Manzur & Boon-Kiat Chew, 2003. "How rewarding is technical analysis? Evidence from Singapore stock market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(7), pages 543-551.
    34. Fernandez-Rodriguez, Fernando & Gonzalez-Martel, Christian & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simon, 2000. "On the profitability of technical trading rules based on artificial neural networks:: Evidence from the Madrid stock market," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 89-94, October.
    35. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    36. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1989. "Business conditions and expected returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 23-49, November.
    37. 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.
    38. Andrew W. Lo & Harry Mamaysky & Jiang Wang, 2000. "Foundations of Technical Analysis: Computational Algorithms, Statistical Inference, and Empirical Implementation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1705-1765, August.
    39. Thomas Gehrig & Lukas Menkhoff, 2006. "Extended evidence on the use of technical analysis in foreign exchange," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(4), pages 327-338.
    40. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Chinn, Menzie David, 2001. "Currency traders and exchange rate dynamics: a survey of the US market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 439-471, August.
    41. 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.
    42. Taylor, Mark P. & Allen, Helen, 1992. "The use of technical analysis in the foreign exchange market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 304-314, June.
    43. Teo Jasic & Douglas Wood, 2004. "The profitability of daily stock market indices trades based on neural network predictions: case study for the S&P 500, the DAX, the TOPIX and the FTSE in the period 1965-1999," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 285-297.
    44. Ki-Yeol Kwon & Richard Kish, 2002. "Technical trading strategies and return predictability: NYSE," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(9), pages 639-653.
    45. Chan, Louis K C & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Lakonishok, Josef, 1996. "Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1681-1713, December.
    46. Gencay, Ramazan, 1999. "Linear, non-linear and essential foreign exchange rate prediction with simple technical trading rules," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 91-107, February.
    47. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Wong, Clement Yuk-Pang, 2000. "A survey of market practitioners' views on exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 401-419, August.
    48. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    49. Brock, William & Lakonishok, Josef & LeBaron, Blake, 1992. "Simple Technical Trading Rules and the Stochastic Properties of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1731-1764, December.
    50. Bertrand Maillet & Thierry Michel, 2000. "Further Insights on the Puzzle of Technical Analysis Profitability," Post-Print hal-00308986, HAL.
    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. Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "The Interaction Between the Aggregate Behaviour of Technical Trading Systems and Stock Price Dynamics," WIFO Working Papers 290, WIFO.
    2. Stephan Schulmeister, 2009. "Technical Trading and Trends in the Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 37582, Juni.
    3. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2006. "The interaction between technical currency trading and exchange rate fluctuations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 212-233, September.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Stephan Schulmeister, 2012. "Technical Trading and Commodity Price Fluctuations," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 45238, Juni.
    7. Stephan Schulmeister, 2009. "Trading Practices and Price Dynamics in Commodity Markets and the Stabilising Effects of a Transaction Tax," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 34919, Juni.
    8. Christopher J. Neely & Paul A. Weller, 2011. "Technical analysis in the foreign exchange market," Working Papers 2011-001, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "Performance of Technical Trading Systems in the Yen/Dollar Market," WIFO Working Papers 291, WIFO.
    10. Stephan Schulmeister, 2000. "Technical Analysis and Exchange Rate Dynamics," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 25857, Juni.
    11. 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.
    12. Neely, Christopher J. & Weller, Paul A. & Ulrich, Joshua M., 2009. "The Adaptive Markets Hypothesis: Evidence from the Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 467-488, April.
    13. Shynkevich, Andrei, 2012. "Performance of technical analysis in growth and small cap segments of the US equity market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 193-208.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2009. "Aggregate trading behaviour of technical models and the yen/dollar exchange rate 1976-2007," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 270-279, August.
    17. Ülkü, Numan & Prodan, Eugeniu, 2013. "Drivers of technical trend-following rules' profitability in world stock markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 214-229.
    18. Strobel, Marcus & Auer, Benjamin R., 2018. "Does the predictive power of variable moving average rules vanish over time and can we explain such tendencies?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 168-184.
    19. Friesen, Geoffrey C. & Weller, Paul A. & Dunham, Lee M., 2009. "Price trends and patterns in technical analysis: A theoretical and empirical examination," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1089-1100, June.
    20. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technical trading; stock price dynamics; momentum effect; reversal effect;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wfo:wpaper:y:2008:i:323. 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: Florian Mayr (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wifooat.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.