IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wfo/wpaper/y2007i291.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Performance of Technical Trading Systems in the Yen/Dollar Market

Author

Listed:
  • Stephan Schulmeister

Abstract

The study investigates the profitability of 1,024 moving average and momentum models and their components in the yen/dollar market. It turns out that all models would have been profitable between 1976 and 1999. The pattern of profitability is as follows: the models produce more single losses than single profits, however, the size of the single profits is on average much higher than the size of single losses. Hence, the profitability of technical currency trading is exclusively due to the exploitation of persistent exchange rate trends. These results hold also when technical trading is examined over subperiods. The models which perform best over the most recent subperiod are in most cases significantly profitable also ex ante. However, the profitability of technical currency trading based on daily data has declined since the late 1980s and has disappeared over the out-of-sample period between 2000 and 2004.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "Performance of Technical Trading Systems in the Yen/Dollar Market," WIFO Working Papers 291, WIFO.
    • Handle: RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2007:i:291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/29058
    File Function: abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Stephan Schulmeister, 2008. "Components of the profitability of technical currency trading," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(11), pages 917-930.
    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. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2009. "Profitability of technical stock trading: Has it moved from daily to intraday data?," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 190-201, October.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Stephan Schulmeister, 2000. "Technical Analysis and Exchange Rate Dynamics," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 25857, February.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Gencay, Ramazan & Dacorogna, Michel & Olsen, Richard & Pictet, Olivier, 2003. "Foreign exchange trading models and market behavior," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 909-935, April.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.
    21. Curcio, Riccardo, et al, 1997. "Do Technical Trading Rules Generate Profits? Conclusions from the Intra-day Foreign Exchange Market," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 2(4), pages 267-280, October.
    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. Michel Beine & Paul De Grauwe & Marianna Grimaldi, 2014. "The Impact of FX Central Bank Intervention in a Noise Trading Framework," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and Global Financial Policies, chapter 6, pages 189-216, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "The Interaction Between the Aggregate Behaviour of Technical Trading Systems and Stock Price Dynamics," WIFO Working Papers 290, WIFO.

    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, 2009. "Technical Trading and Trends in the Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 37582, February.
    2. Schulmeister, Stephan, 2006. "The interaction between technical currency trading and exchange rate fluctuations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 212-233, September.
    3. Stephan Schulmeister, 2009. "Profitability of technical stock trading: Has it moved from daily to intraday data?," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 190-201, October.
    4. Stephan Schulmeister, 2007. "The Interaction Between the Aggregate Behaviour of Technical Trading Systems and Stock Price Dynamics," WIFO Working Papers 290, WIFO.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Stephan Schulmeister, 2012. "Technical Trading and Commodity Price Fluctuations," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 45238, February.
    8. Stephan Schulmeister, 2009. "Trading Practices and Price Dynamics in Commodity Markets and the Stabilising Effects of a Transaction Tax," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 34919, February.
    9. Christopher J. Neely & Paul A. Weller, 2011. "Technical analysis in the foreign exchange market," Working Papers 2011-001, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    10. 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.
    11. Tweneboah Senzu, Emmanuel, 2020. "Modern currency exchange rate behaviour and proposed trend-like forecasting model," MPRA Paper 99933, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Frömmel, Michael & Lampaert, Kevin, 2016. "Does frequency matter for intraday technical trading?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 177-183.
    17. 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.
    18. Gehrig, Thomas & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2003. "Technical Analysis in Foreign Exchange - The Workhorse Gains Further Ground," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-278, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    19. Yung-Ho Chang, 2019. "Cross-market information spillover and the performance of technical trading in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 43(2), pages 211-227, April.
    20. Stephan Schulmeister, 2000. "Technical Analysis and Exchange Rate Dynamics," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 25857, February.

    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:2007:i:291. 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.