IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jimfin/v45y2014icp38-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is there momentum or reversal in weekly currency returns?

Author

Listed:
  • Raza, Ahmad
  • Marshall, Ben R.
  • Visaltanachoti, Nuttawat

Abstract

We investigate whether momentum or reversal is the dominant phenomenon in short horizon (one- to four-week) foreign exchange rate returns. We find, based on a broad sample of 63 emerging and developed market currencies, evidence of momentum rather than reversal. Momentum strategy returns are as large as 8% p.a. The short-term momentum effect appears to be robust. Returns are larger in the earlier sub-period but still exist in the more recent period. The strategies are also profitable when the USD is appreciating or depreciating but they perform better in business cycle expansions.

Suggested Citation

  • Raza, Ahmad & Marshall, Ben R. & Visaltanachoti, Nuttawat, 2014. "Is there momentum or reversal in weekly currency returns?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 38-60.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:45:y:2014:i:c:p:38-60
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jimonfin.2014.02.009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261560614000400
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2014.02.009?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. Chong, Terence Tai-Leung & Ip, Hugo Tak-Sang, 2009. "Do momentum-based strategies work in emerging currency markets?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 479-493, September.
    2. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sarno, Lucio & Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2012. "Currency momentum strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 660-684.
    3. Hanno Lustig & Nikolai Roussanov & Adrien Verdelhan, 2011. "Common Risk Factors in Currency Markets," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(11), pages 3731-3777.
    4. Lo, Andrew W & MacKinlay, A Craig, 1990. "When Are Contrarian Profits Due to Stock Market Overreaction?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(2), pages 175-205.
    5. 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.
    6. Kent Daniel & David Hirshleifer & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 1998. "Investor Psychology and Security Market Under- and Overreactions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 1839-1885, December.
    7. Loriano Mancini & Angelo Ranaldo & Jan Wrampelmeyer, 2013. "Liquidity in the Foreign Exchange Market: Measurement, Commonality, and Risk Premiums," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(5), pages 1805-1841, October.
    8. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "Carry Trade and Momentum in Currency Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 511-535, December.
    9. Martin Eichenbaum & Craig Burnside & Sergio Rebelo, 2007. "The Returns to Currency Speculation in Emerging Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 333-338, May.
    10. 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.
    11. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    12. Bruce N. Lehmann, 1988. "Fads, Martingales, and Market Efficiency," NBER Working Papers 2533, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Craig Burnside & Bing Han & David Hirshleifer & Tracy Yue Wang, 2011. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Premium Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 523-558.
    14. Barberis, Nicholas & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1998. "A model of investor sentiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 307-343, September.
    15. Bruce N. Lehmann, 1990. "Fads, Martingales, and Market Efficiency," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 1-28.
    16. Stephen Gilmore & Fumio Hayashi, 2011. "Emerging Market Currency Excess Returns," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 85-111, October.
    17. Lukas Menkhoff & Lucio Sarno & Maik Schmeling & Andreas Schrimpf, 2012. "Carry Trades and Global Foreign Exchange Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 681-718, April.
    18. Clifford S. Asness & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2013. "Value and Momentum Everywhere," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 929-985, June.
    19. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    20. Narasimhan Jegadeesh & Sheridan Titman, 2001. "Profitability of Momentum Strategies: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 699-720, April.
    21. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    22. Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Ooi, Yao Hua & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2012. "Time series momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 228-250.
    23. 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.
    24. 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.
    25. Akram, Q. Farooq & Rime, Dagfinn & Sarno, Lucio, 2008. "Arbitrage in the foreign exchange market: Turning on the microscope," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 237-253, December.
    26. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    27. John M. Griffin & Xiuqing Ji & J. Spencer Martin, 2003. "Momentum Investing and Business Cycle Risk: Evidence from Pole to Pole," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2515-2547, December.
    28. Pan, Li & Tang, Ya & Xu, Jianguo, 2013. "Weekly momentum by return interval ranking," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1191-1208.
    29. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 1999. "A Unified Theory of Underreaction, Momentum Trading, and Overreaction in Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2143-2184, December.
    30. Tarun Chordia & Lakshmanan Shivakumar, 2002. "Momentum, Business Cycle, and Time‐varying Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 985-1019, April.
    31. Roberto C. Gutierrez & Eric K. Kelley, 2008. "The Long‐Lasting Momentum in Weekly Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(1), pages 415-447, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yamani, Ehab, 2019. "Diversification role of currency momentum for carry trade: Evidence from financial crises," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-19.
    2. Maiko Koga, 2016. "Momentum trading behavior in the FX market: Evidence from Japanese retail investors," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 92-96.
    3. Yamani, Ehab, 2021. "Foreign exchange market efficiency and the global financial crisis: Fundamental versus technical information," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 74-89.
    4. Yamani, Ehab, 2021. "Can technical trading beat the foreign exchange market in times of crisis?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    5. Chen, Chih-Nan & Lin, Chien-Hsiu, 2020. "The sources of pricing factors underlying the cross-section of currency returns," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 250-265.
    6. Jamali, Ibrahim & Yamani, Ehab, 2019. "Out-of-sample exchange rate predictability in emerging markets: Fundamentals versus technical analysis," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 241-263.
    7. Wang, Xi & Yang, Jiao-Hui & Wang, Kai-Li & Fawson, Christopher, 2017. "Dynamic information spillovers in intraregionally-focused spot and forward currency markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 78-110.
    8. Lee, Namhoon & Choi, Wonseok & Pae, Yuntaek, 2021. "Market efficiency in foreign exchange market," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    9. Zhuang, Chunjuan, 2018. "Improving performance of exchange rate momentum strategy using volatility information," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 510(C), pages 741-753.
    10. Hsu, Ching-Chi & Chen, Miao-Ling, 2021. "Currency momentum strategies based on the Chinese Yuan: Timing of foreign exchange volatility," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

    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. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sarno, Lucio & Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2012. "Currency momentum strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 660-684.
    2. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, November.
    3. Stephen A. Gorman & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2021. "The ABC’s of the alternative risk premium: academic roots," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(6), pages 405-436, October.
    4. Fernando F. Ferreira & A. Christian Silva & Ju-Yi Yen, 2014. "Information ratio analysis of momentum strategies," Papers 1402.3030, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2014.
    5. Simarjeet Singh & Nidhi Walia, 2022. "Momentum investing: a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 87-113, February.
    6. Gao, Ya & Guo, Bin & Xiong, Xiong, 2021. "Signed momentum in the Chinese stock market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    7. Yang Gao & Henry Leung & Stephen Satchell, 2018. "A critique of momentum strategies," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(5), pages 341-350, September.
    8. Shi, Huai-Long & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2017. "Wax and wane of the cross-sectional momentum and contrarian effects: Evidence from the Chinese stock markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 486(C), pages 397-407.
    9. Li, Kai, 2021. "Nonlinear effect of sentiment on momentum," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    10. Garcia-Feijoo, Luis & Jensen, Gerald R. & Jensen, Tyler K., 2018. "Momentum and funding conditions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 312-329.
    11. Fernando F. Ferreira & A. Christian Silva & Ju-Yi Yen, 2019. "Detailed study of a moving average trading rule," Papers 1907.00212, arXiv.org.
    12. Jiang, Xue & Han, Liyan & Yin, Libo, 2019. "Currency strategies based on momentum, carry trade and skewness," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 517(C), pages 121-131.
    13. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Phan, Dinh Hoang Bach, 2017. "Momentum strategies for Islamic stocks," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 96-112.
    14. Gao, Yang & Leung, Henry & Satchell, Stephen, 2022. "Partial moment momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    15. Theissen, Erik & Yilanci, Can, 2020. "Momentum? What Momentum?," CFR Working Papers 20-09, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    16. Sandrine Jacob Leal, 2015. "Fundamentalists, chartists and asset pricing anomalies," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(11), pages 1837-1850, November.
    17. Martin H. Schmidt, 2017. "Trading strategies based on past returns: evidence from Germany," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 31(2), pages 201-256, May.
    18. Achim BACKHAUS & Aliya ZHAKANOVA ISIKSAL, 2016. "The Impact of Momentum Factors on Multi Asset Portfolio," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(4), pages 146-169, December.
    19. Sandrine Jacob Leal, 2015. "Fundamentalists, Chartists and Asset pricing anomalies," Post-Print hal-01508002, HAL.
    20. Sina Ehsani & Juhani T. Linnainmaa, 2019. "Factor Momentum and the Momentum Factor," NBER Working Papers 25551, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Currency; Momentum; Reversal;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    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:jimfin:v:45:y:2014:i:c:p:38-60. 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/inca/30443 .

    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.