IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2001-021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Markov switching models predict excess foreign exchange returns?

Author

Abstract

This paper merges the literature on technical trading rules with the literature on Markov switching to develop economically useful trading rules. The Markov models' out-of sample, excess returns modestly exceed those of standard technical rules and are profitable over the most recent subsample. A portfolio of Markov and standard technical rules outperforms either set individually, on a risk-adjusted basis. The Markov rules' high excess returns contrast with mixed performance on statistical tests of forecast accuracy. There is no clear source for the trends, but permitting the mean to depend on higher moments of the exchange rate distribution modestly increases returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Dueker & Christopher J. Neely, 2006. "Can Markov switching models predict excess foreign exchange returns?," Working Papers 2001-021, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2001-021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2001-021
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2001/2001-021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Neely, Christopher & Weller, Paul & Dittmar, Rob, 1997. "Is Technical Analysis in the Foreign Exchange Market Profitable? A Genetic Programming Approach," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 405-426, December.
    3. LeBaron, Blake, 1999. "Technical trading rule profitability and foreign exchange intervention," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 125-143, October.
    4. Dueker, Michael J, 1997. "Markov Switching in GARCH Processes and Mean-Reverting Stock-Market Volatility," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(1), pages 26-34, January.
    5. Clarida, Richard H. & Sarno, Lucio & Taylor, Mark P. & Valente, Giorgio, 2003. "The out-of-sample success of term structure models as exchange rate predictors: a step beyond," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 61-83, May.
    6. Szakmary, Andrew C. & Mathur, Ike, 1997. "Central bank intervention and trading rule profits in foreign exchange markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 513-535, August.
    7. Engel, Charles & Hamilton, James D, 1990. "Long Swings in the Dollar: Are They in the Data and Do Markets Know It?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 689-713, September.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Neely, Christopher J., 2002. "The temporal pattern of trading rule returns and exchange rate intervention: intervention does not generate technical trading profits," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 211-232, October.
    11. LeBaron, B., 1992. "Do Moving Average Trading Rule Results Imply Nonlinearites in Foreign Exchange Markets?," Working papers 9222, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    12. Christopher J. Neely & Lucio Sarno, 2002. "How well do monetary fundamentals forecast exchange rates?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 84(Sep), pages 51-74.
    13. Peter F. Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2006. "Financial Asset Returns, Direction-of-Change Forecasting, and Volatility Dynamics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(8), pages 1273-1287, August.
    14. Hamilton, James D., 1990. "Analysis of time series subject to changes in regime," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 39-70.
    15. Saacke, Peter, 2002. "Technical analysis and the effectiveness of central bank intervention," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 459-479, August.
    16. Engel, Charles, 1994. "Can the Markov switching model forecast exchange rates?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-2), pages 151-165, February.
    17. Blake LeBaron, "undated". "Do Moving Average Trading Rule Results Imply Nonlinearities in Foreign Exchange?," Working papers _005, University of Wisconsin - Madison.
    18. Dewachter, Hans, 2001. "Can Markov switching models replicate chartist profits in the foreign exchange market?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 25-41, February.
    19. Sweeney, Richard J, 1986. "Beating the Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 163-182, March.
    20. 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.
    21. Meese, Richard A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1983. "Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies : Do they fit out of sample?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1-2), pages 3-24, February.
    22. Christopher J. Neely, 1997. "Technical analysis in the foreign exchange market: a layman's guide," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Sep, pages 23-38.
    23. Sapp, Stephen, 2004. "Are all Central Bank interventions created equal? An empirical investigation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 443-474, 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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Schmidt, Robert & Wollmershäuser, Timo, 2004. "Sterilized Foreign Exchange Market Interventions in a Chartist-Fundamentalist Exchange Rate Model," W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers 50, University of Würzburg, Department of Economics.
    6. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2006. "The interaction between technical currency trading and exchange rate fluctuations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 212-233, September.
    7. Harris, Richard D.F. & Yilmaz, Fatih, 2009. "A momentum trading strategy based on the low frequency component of the exchange rate," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1575-1585, September.
    8. Ślepaczuk Robert & Sakowski Paweł & Zakrzewski Grzegorz, 2018. "Investment Strategies that Beat the Market. What Can We Squeeze from the Market?," Financial Internet Quarterly (formerly e-Finanse), Sciendo, vol. 14(4), pages 36-55, December.
    9. 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.
    10. repec:wvu:wpaper:09-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. 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.
    12. Christopher J. Neely & Paul A. Weller, 2011. "Technical analysis in the foreign exchange market," Working Papers 2011-001, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    13. 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.
    14. Yuan, Chunming, 2011. "Forecasting exchange rates: The multi-state Markov-switching model with smoothing," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 342-362, April.
    15. Robert Ślepaczuk & Grzegorz Zakrzewski & Paweł Sakowski, 2012. "Investment strategies beating the market. What can we squeeze from the market?," Working Papers 2012-04, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    16. 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.
    17. Serban, Alina F., 2010. "Combining mean reversion and momentum trading strategies in foreign exchange markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 2720-2727, November.
    18. Neely, Christopher J. & Weller, Paul A., 2013. "Lessons from the evolution of foreign exchange trading strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 3783-3798.
    19. 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.
    20. Petr Zeman, 2014. "Technical Trading and Testing of Intra-day Market Efficiency in the Foreign Exchange Market," Acta Universitatis Bohemiae Meridionales, University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice, vol. 17(1), pages 3-13.
    21. Todea, Alexandru & Zoicas Ienciu, Adrian, 2011. "Technical Analysis and Stochastic Properties of Exchange Rate Movements: Empirical Evidence from the Romanian Currency Market," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 175-192, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign exchange; Forecasting;

    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:fip:fedlwp:2001-021. 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: Anna Oates (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.