IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/riibaf/v61y2022ics0275531922000514.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Smart money in China's A-share market: Evidence from big data

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Zhenhua
  • Liu, Zhenya
  • Teka, Hanen
  • Zhang, Yifan

Abstract

In this study, we propose a bar-level tracker of smart money trades by detecting the trading aggressiveness of informed traders. Accordingly, we define monthly smart money measures to identify the direction of informed trades. By using the 1-min transaction data in China’s A-share market from 1999 to 2019, we find a negative cross-sectional relationship between the smart money measures and stock future returns. We construct smart money strategies based on the fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm, wherein the optimal strategy produces an annual Sharpe ratio of 1.169. Our findings indicate that the FCM-based portfolio formation could outperform the conventional sorting-based strategies. This study may be useful for research on smart money trades and the analysis of cross-sectional variation in returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Zhenhua & Liu, Zhenya & Teka, Hanen & Zhang, Yifan, 2022. "Smart money in China's A-share market: Evidence from big data," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:61:y:2022:i:c:s0275531922000514
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101663
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0275531922000514
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101663?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. Kelly, Bryan T. & Pruitt, Seth & Su, Yinan, 2019. "Characteristics are covariances: A unified model of risk and return," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(3), pages 501-524.
    2. Hirshleifer, David & Luo, Guo Ying, 2001. "On the survival of overconfident traders in a competitive securities market," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 73-84, January.
    3. Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1990. "The Noise Trader Approach to Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 19-33, Spring.
    4. Lu Zheng, 1999. "Is Money Smart? A Study of Mutual Fund Investors' Fund Selection Ability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 901-933, June.
    5. Kelly, Morgan, 1997. "Do Noise Traders Influence Stock Prices?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 351-363, August.
    6. Travis Sapp & Ashish Tiwari, 2004. "Does Stock Return Momentum Explain the "Smart Money" Effect?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2605-2622, December.
    7. Gruber, Martin J, 1996. "Another Puzzle: The Growth in Activity Managed Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 783-810, July.
    8. 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.
    9. J. Bradford De Long & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1989. "The Size and Incidence of the Losses from Noise Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 681-696, July.
    10. Holden, Craig W & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1992. "Long-Lived Private Information and Imperfect Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 247-270, March.
    11. Glosten, Lawrence R, 1994. "Is the Electronic Open Limit Order Book Inevitable?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1127-1161, September.
    12. Jiangze Bian & Kalok Chan & Donghui Shi & Hao Zhou, 2018. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Order Aggressiveness?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 1121-1151.
    13. Chen, Hong-Yi & Chen, Hsuan-Chi & Lai, Christine W., 2021. "Internet search, fund flows, and fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    14. Aneel Keswani & David Stolin, 2008. "Which Money Is Smart? Mutual Fund Buys and Sells of Individual and Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(1), pages 85-118, February.
    15. Christopher A Parsons & Riccardo Sabbatucci & Sheridan Titman, 2020. "Geographic Lead-Lag Effects," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(10), pages 4721-4770.
    16. Goodell, John W. & Kumar, Satish & Lim, Weng Marc & Pattnaik, Debidutta, 2021. "Artificial intelligence and machine learning in finance: Identifying foundations, themes, and research clusters from bibliometric analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    17. Shihao Gu & Bryan Kelly & Dacheng Xiu, 2020. "Empirical Asset Pricing via Machine Learning," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(5), pages 2223-2273.
    18. 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.
    19. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    20. John Y. Campbell & Albert S. Kyle, 1993. "Smart Money, Noise Trading and Stock Price Behaviour," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34.
    21. David E. Rapach & Jack K. Strauss & Guofu Zhou, 2013. "International Stock Return Predictability: What Is the Role of the United States?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(4), pages 1633-1662, August.
    22. 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.
    23. Ranaldo, Angelo, 2004. "Order aggressiveness in limit order book markets," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 53-74, January.
    24. Kerry Back & C. Henry Cao & Gregory A. Willard, 2000. "Imperfect Competition among Informed Traders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2117-2155, October.
    25. Sadzik, Tomasz & Woolnough, Chris, 2021. "Snowballing private information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    26. Andreas Lindemann & Christian Dunis & Paulo Lisboa, 2005. "Probability distributions and leveraged trading strategies: an application of Gaussian mixture models to the Morgan Stanley Technology Index Tracking Fund," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(5), pages 459-474.
    27. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    28. Duong, Huu Nhan & Kalev, Petko S. & Krishnamurti, Chandrasekhar, 2009. "Order aggressiveness of institutional and individual investors," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 533-546, November.
    29. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1990. "Equilibrium Short Horizons of Investors and Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 148-153, May.
    30. Shihao Gu & Bryan Kelly & Dacheng Xiu, 2020. "Empirical Asset Pricing via Machine Learning," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 33(5), pages 2223-2273.
    31. Frazzini, Andrea & Lamont, Owen A., 2008. "Dumb money: Mutual fund flows and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 299-322, May.
    32. Baruch, Shmuel & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2017. "Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 561-588.
    33. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    34. Foster, F. Douglas & Viswanathan, S., 1994. "Strategic Trading with Asymmetrically Informed Traders and Long-Lived Information," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 499-518, December.
    35. Goettler, Ronald L. & Parlour, Christine A. & Rajan, Uday, 2009. "Informed traders and limit order markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 67-87, July.
    36. 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.
    37. Hsu, Chih-Hsiang, 2016. "Strategic noise trading of later-informed traders in a multi-market framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 235-243.
    38. Dou, Winston Wei & Taylor, Lucian A. & Wang, Wei & Wang, Wenyu, 2021. "Dissecting bankruptcy frictions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 975-1000.
    39. Wu, Weiou & Lau, Marco Chi Keung & Vigne, Samuel A., 2017. "Modelling asymmetric conditional dependence between Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1137-1149.
    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. Wang, Yaqi & Wang, Chunfeng & Sensoy, Ahmet & Yao, Shouyu & Cheng, Feiyang, 2022. "Can investors’ informed trading predict cryptocurrency returns? Evidence from machine learning," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(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. Doron Avramov & Si Cheng & Lior Metzker, 2023. "Machine Learning vs. Economic Restrictions: Evidence from Stock Return Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 2587-2619, May.
    2. Yan, Jingda & Yu, Jialin, 2023. "Cross-stock momentum and factor momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2).
    3. Blanco, Ivan & De Jesus, Miguel & Remesal, Alvaro, 2023. "Overlapping momentum portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-22.
    4. Hanauer, Matthias X. & Kalsbach, Tobias, 2023. "Machine learning and the cross-section of emerging market stock returns," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    5. Jiaju Miao & Pawel Polak, 2023. "Online Ensemble of Models for Optimal Predictive Performance with Applications to Sector Rotation Strategy," Papers 2304.09947, arXiv.org.
    6. Akbas, Ferhat & Boehmer, Ekkehart & Jiang, Chao & Koch, Paul D., 2022. "Overnight returns, daytime reversals, and future stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 850-875.
    7. Cakici, Nusret & Zaremba, Adam, 2021. "Liquidity and the cross-section of international stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    8. Wolfgang Drobetz & Tizian Otto, 2021. "Empirical asset pricing via machine learning: evidence from the European stock market," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(7), pages 507-538, December.
    9. Murphy Jun Jie Lee, 2013. "The Microstructure of Trading Processes on the Singapore Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 4, July-Dece.
    10. Berggrun, Luis & Lizarzaburu, Edmundo, 2015. "Fund flows and performance in Brazil," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 199-207.
    11. Cao, Zhengyu & Wang, Rundong & Xiao, Xinrong & Yin, Chengxi, 2023. "Disseminating information across connected firms — Analyst site visits can help," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 510-531.
    12. Xin Chen & Wei He & Libin Tao & Jianfeng Yu, 2023. "Attention and Underreaction-Related Anomalies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 636-659, January.
    13. Hai Lin & Pengfei Liu & Cheng Zhang, 2023. "The trend premium around the world: Evidence from the stock market," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 23(2), pages 317-358, June.
    14. Cakici, Nusret & Fieberg, Christian & Metko, Daniel & Zaremba, Adam, 2023. "Machine learning goes global: Cross-sectional return predictability in international stock markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    15. Luis Vicente & Cristina Ortiz & Laura Andreu, 2011. "Is the Average Investor Smarter than the Average Euro?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 143-161, December.
    16. George J. Jiang & H. Zafer Yüksel, 2019. "Sentimental mutual fund flows," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 54(4), pages 709-738, November.
    17. Wu, Zhen-Xing & Chen, Tsung-Yu, 2019. "Information asymmetry, market state, and implementation risk," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    18. Weichuan Deng & Pawel Polak & Abolfazl Safikhani & Ronakdilip Shah, 2023. "A Unified Framework for Fast Large-Scale Portfolio Optimization," Papers 2303.12751, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    19. Christian Fieberg & Daniel Metko & Thorsten Poddig & Thomas Loy, 2023. "Machine learning techniques for cross-sectional equity returns’ prediction," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 45(1), pages 289-323, March.
    20. Obaid, Khaled & Pukthuanthong, Kuntara, 2022. "A picture is worth a thousand words: Measuring investor sentiment by combining machine learning and photos from news," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 273-297.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    China’s A-share; Smart money; Trading aggressiveness; Fuzzy c-means clustering;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • C50 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - General
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:riibaf:v:61:y:2022:i:c:s0275531922000514. 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/ribaf .

    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.