Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
Has momentum lost its mojo?
A paper by researchers at the University of New South Wales, which was highlighted on the CXO Advisory Group blog, found that momentum strategies didn’t generate significant returns between 1993 and 2004, largely due to poor performance between 2001 and 2004.
In my view this highlights the need to combine a momentum system with an appropriate market-timing strategy. The best momentum players learn to sit out choppy and trendless markets. Unfortunately in the US this has been going on for some time now. But traders in the likes of the UK and Australia have experienced strongly trending markets over the past few years.
The UNSW paper also notes that one successful momentum strategy is ‘front running’. That is, buying strong stocks a week before month’s end to benefit from end-of-month buying by mutual funds. This is not the same as illegal ‘front running’ and could be worth a look at. As anyone can see from their own accounts, the last days of the month usually result in a jump.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Momentum, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
