IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finmar/v23y2015icp75-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the determinants of pairs trading profitability

Author

Listed:
  • Jacobs, Heiko
  • Weber, Martin

Abstract

We perform a large-scale empirical analysis of pairs trading, a popular relative-value arbitrage approach. We start with a cross-country study of 34 international stock markets and uncover that abnormal returns are a persistent phenomenon. We then construct a comprehensive U.S. data set to explore the sources behind the puzzling profitability in more depth. Our findings indicate that the type of news leading to pair divergence, the dynamics of investor attention as well as the dynamics of limits to arbitrage are important drivers of the strategy׳s time-varying performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacobs, Heiko & Weber, Martin, 2015. "On the determinants of pairs trading profitability," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 75-97.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finmar:v:23:y:2015:i:c:p:75-97
    DOI: 10.1016/j.finmar.2014.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386418114000809
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.finmar.2014.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kewei Hou, 2007. "Industry Information Diffusion and the Lead-lag Effect in Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1113-1138.
    2. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    3. Gagnon, Louis & Andrew Karolyi, G., 2010. "Multi-market trading and arbitrage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 53-80, July.
    4. Hong, Harrison & Torous, Walter & Valkanov, Rossen, 2007. "Do industries lead stock markets?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 367-396, February.
    5. Karl B. Diether & Christopher J. Malloy & Anna Scherbina, 2002. "Differences of Opinion and the Cross Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2113-2141, October.
    6. Binh Do & Robert Faff, 2012. "Are Pairs Trading Profits Robust To Trading Costs?," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 35(2), pages 261-287, June.
    7. Luigi Zingales, 1995. "What Determines the Value of Corporate Votes?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(4), pages 1047-1073.
    8. H. Kent Baker & Gary E. Powell & Daniel G. Weaver, 1999. "Does NYSE Listing Affect Firm Visibility?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 28(2), Summer.
    9. Hong, Harrison & Kubik, Jeffrey D. & Stein, Jeremy C., 2008. "The only game in town: Stock-price consequences of local bias," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 20-37, October.
    10. Lior Menzly & Oguzhan Ozbas, 2010. "Market Segmentation and Cross‐predictability of Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1555-1580, August.
    11. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    12. Mark Mitchell & Todd Pulvino & Erik Stafford, 2002. "Limited Arbitrage in Equity Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 551-584, April.
    13. Michael J. Cooper & Orlin Dimitrov & P. Raghavendra Rau, 2001. "A Rose.com by Any Other Name," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2371-2388, December.
    14. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1997. "Industry costs of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, February.
    15. Zhi Da & Joseph Engelberg & Pengjie Gao, 2011. "In Search of Attention," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(5), pages 1461-1499, October.
    16. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2007. "Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 129-152, Spring.
    17. Savor, Pavel & Wilson, Mungo, 2013. "How Much Do Investors Care About Macroeconomic Risk? Evidence from Scheduled Economic Announcements," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 343-375, April.
    18. Lee, Charles M C & Shleifer, Andrei & Thaler, Richard H, 1991. "Investor Sentiment and the Closed-End Fund Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 75-109, March.
    19. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    20. Smith, Brian F. & Amoako-Adu, Ben, 1995. "Relative Prices of Dual Class Shares," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 223-239, June.
    21. Baker, Malcolm & Wurgler, Jeffrey & Yuan, Yu, 2012. "Global, local, and contagious investor sentiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 272-287.
    22. Grace Xing Hu & Jun Pan & Jiang Wang, 2013. "Noise as Information for Illiquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2341-2382, December.
    23. Martin Cherkes & Jacob Sagi & Richard Stanton, 2009. "A Liquidity-Based Theory of Closed-End Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 257-297, January.
    24. Froot, Kenneth A. & Dabora, Emil M., 1999. "How are stock prices affected by the location of trade?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 189-216, August.
    25. Owen A. Lamont & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Can the Market Add and Subtract? Mispricing in Tech Stock Carve-outs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 227-268, April.
    26. Peng, Lin & Xiong, Wei, 2006. "Investor attention, overconfidence and category learning," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 563-602, June.
    27. Rosenthal, Leonard & Young, Colin, 1990. "The seemingly anomalous price behavior of Royal Dutch/Shell and Unilever N.V./PLC," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 123-141, July.
    28. Barberis, Nicholas & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "Style investing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 161-199, May.
    29. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Stefan Nagel & Lasse H. Pedersen, 2009. "Carry Trades and Currency Crashes," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2008, Volume 23, pages 313-347, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Andy C.W. Chui & Sheridan Titman & K.C. John Wei, 2010. "Individualism and Momentum around the World," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 361-392, February.
    31. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    32. Shane A. Corwin & Paul Schultz, 2012. "A Simple Way to Estimate Bid‐Ask Spreads from Daily High and Low Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 719-760, April.
    33. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini, 2008. "Economic Links and Predictable Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1977-2011, August.
    34. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    35. Pontiff, Jeffrey, 2006. "Costly arbitrage and the myth of idiosyncratic risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 35-52, October.
    36. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    37. Shane A. Corwin & Jay F. Coughenour, 2008. "Limited Attention and the Allocation of Effort in Securities Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 3031-3067, December.
    38. Stefano Dellavigna & Joshua M. Pollet, 2009. "Investor Inattention and Friday Earnings Announcements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 709-749, April.
    39. Boehme, Rodney D. & Danielsen, Bartley R. & Kumar, Praveen & Sorescu, Sorin M., 2009. "Idiosyncratic risk and the cross-section of stock returns: Merton (1987) meets Miller (1977)," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 438-468, August.
    40. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    41. Eun, Cheol S. & Wang, Lingling & Xiao, Steven C., 2015. "Culture and R2," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 283-303.
    42. Savor, Pavel & Wilson, Mungo, 2014. "Asset pricing: A tale of two days," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 171-201.
    43. Niklas Karlsson & George Loewenstein & Duane Seppi, 2009. "The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 95-115, April.
    44. Pontiff, Jeffrey, 1995. "Closed-end fund premia and returns Implications for financial market equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 341-370, March.
    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. Jacobs, Heiko, 2015. "What explains the dynamics of 100 anomalies?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 65-85.
    2. Gagnon, Louis & Andrew Karolyi, G., 2010. "Multi-market trading and arbitrage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 53-80, July.
    3. Xin Chen & Wei He & Libin Tao & Jianfeng Yu, 2023. "Attention and Underreaction-Related Anomalies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 636-659, January.
    4. Lee, Charles M.C. & Sun, Stephen Teng & Wang, Rongfei & Zhang, Ran, 2019. "Technological links and predictable returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(3), pages 76-96.
    5. Hillert, Alexander & Jacobs, Heiko & Müller, Sebastian, 2018. "Journalist disagreement," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 57-76.
    6. Chen, Linda H. & Jiang, George J. & Zhu, Kevin X., 2018. "Total attention: The effect of macroeconomic news on market reaction to earnings news," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 142-156.
    7. Turan G. Bali & Andriy Bodnaruk & Anna Scherbina & Yi Tang, 2018. "Unusual News Flow and the Cross Section of Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4137-4155, September.
    8. David C. Ling & Andy Naranjo & Benjamin Scheick, 2014. "Investor Sentiment, Limits to Arbitrage and Private Market Returns," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 42(3), pages 531-577, September.
    9. Broman, Markus S., 2016. "Liquidity, style investing and excess comovement of exchange-traded fund returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 27-53.
    10. David Hirshleifer & Po-Hsuan Hsu & Dongmei Li, 2018. "Innovative Originality, Profitability, and Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(7), pages 2553-2605.
    11. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2017. "Replicating Anomalies," NBER Working Papers 23394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    13. Ashish Agarwal & Alvin Chung Man Leung & Prabhudev Konana & Alok Kumar, 2017. "Cosearch Attention and Stock Return Predictability in Supply Chains," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(2), pages 265-288, June.
    14. Birru, Justin, 2018. "Day of the week and the cross-section of returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 182-214.
    15. Cosemans, Mathijs & Frehen, Rik, 2021. "Salience theory and stock prices: Empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 460-483.
    16. David Hirshleife, 2015. "Behavioral Finance," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 133-159, December.
    17. Zareei, Abalfazl, 2021. "Cross-momentum: Tracking idiosyncratic shocks," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 177-199.
    18. Hirshleifer, David & Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Li, Dongmei, 2013. "Innovative efficiency and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 632-654.
    19. Atilgan, Yigit & Bali, Turan G. & Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Gunaydin, A. Doruk, 2020. "Left-tail momentum: Underreaction to bad news, costly arbitrage and equity returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(3), pages 725-753.
    20. Green, T. Clifton & Huang, Ruoyan & Wen, Quan & Zhou, Dexin, 2019. "Crowdsourced employer reviews and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 236-251.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pairs trading; Relative-value arbitrage; Return predictability; International stock markets; Limited attention; Limits to arbitrage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    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:eee:finmar:v:23:y:2015:i:c:p:75-97. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/finmar .

    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.