Can market state and market volatility explain time-varying momentum profits in South Africa?

PurposeWhile the momentum anomaly is prevalent in South Africa, few have examined the reasons influencing it. This study examines whether momentum profits vary through time and are affected by the state of the market and market volatility between 1998 and 2019.Design/methodology/approachThe authors consider combinations of portfolio construction, such as the lookback period, weighting scheme, measure of volatility and the volatility window period. They further examine the interaction of momentum with sentiment, default risk and semi-deviation as a measure of risk, as a means of testing whether behavioural factors have significant influence.FindingsThe results generally show that neither volatility nor market state has explanatory power on momentum profits.Originality/valueThese results make the momentum anomaly in South Africa an even greater mystery than before as they do not conform to the existing literature from developed economies. The authors do, however, find that default risk is a significant predictor of momentum profits, which is a useful additional factor for those fund managers who utilise momentum strategies. This implies that a fundamental factor, default risk, is a potential explanation for the market-related momentum anomaly.

The Momentum Gap and Return Predictability

The formation period return difference between past winners and losers, which I call the momentum gap, negatively predicts momentum profits. I document this for the U.S. stock market and find consistent results across 21 major international markets. A one-standard-deviation increase in the momentum gap predicts a 1.25$\%$ decrease in the monthly momentum return after controlling for existing predictors. This predictability extends up to 5 years for static momentum portfolios, consistent with time-varying investor biases. Following the simple real-time strategy of investing in momentum only when the momentum gap is below the 80th percentile delivers a Sharpe ratio of 0.78.

Timely Loss Recognition Helps Nothing

This paper digests the relationship between the manipulation of losses and price reversals in the Chinese stock market. Timely loss recognition is involved in detecting the manipulation of losses, while price reversals are investigated by momentum profit. In addition, two-way sorting momentum portfolios are employed to connect manipulating losses with price reversals. Companies with low timely loss recognition aggressively manipulate their losses, and our results indicate that they generate much more significantly negative momentum profits. As a consequence, they cannot build up any immunity against reversal risks and encounter much higher reversal risks than other companies. Such findings still hold after the risk adjustments using asset pricing models come into play and when controlling for the calendar effect. This research indeed suggests that investors should exercise caution when dealing with companies whose financial information is too positive. Such companies may dress up their financial reports, thereby significantly increasing the risks associated with price reversals.

The effect of short-term return reversals on momentum profits

The authors investigate the effect of a short-term stock return reversal on the term structure of momentum profits in the Korean stock market following Goyal and Wahal (2015). Their empirical findings show that the term structure of momentum is more pronounced when a return reversal lasts up to two months but is substantially weakened when past performance over the last two months is not taken into account for portfolio formation. Their evidence suggests that the term structure of momentum profitability arises primarily from a carryover of the return reversal from the previous two months.

Risk-Managed Momentum: An Evidence from Indian Stock Market

Relative momentum strategies yield large and substantial profits in the Indian Stock Market. Nevertheless, relative momentum profits are negatively skewed and prone to occasional severe losses. By taking into consideration 450 stocks listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, the present study predicts the timing of these huge momentum losses and proposes a simple risk-managed momentum approach to avoid these losses. The proposed risk-managed momentum approach not only doubles the adjusted Sharpe ratio but also results in significant improvements in downside risks. In contrast to relative momentum payoffs, risk-managed momentum payoffs remain substantial even in extended time frames. The study’s findings are particularly relevant for asset management companies, fund houses and financial academicians working in the area of asset anomalies.

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Stock Return Momentum

This paper investigates the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU), an index capturing newspaper coverage of policy-related issues, and momentum profits. Momentum remains an unexplained anomaly. Our findings reveal a statistically negative association between EPU and hedge momentum portfolios. The short side portfolio dominates this effect as compared to the long side. EPU is statistically significant after controlling for macroeconomic variables. Furthermore, the paper conducts a battery of time series analysis, which highlights that EPU has a causal relationship with the hedge portfolio in the short run. On the other hand, the hedge portfolio has a long-term relationship with EPU, not the other way around.

Buy-Side Competition and Momentum Profits

We show that a new measure of buy-side competition explains momentum profits. The momentum quintile spread is 1.11% when competition is low and negligible when competition is high. Better alphas are attained with superior Sharpe and Sortino ratios, with no negative skewness, and in more investible strategies featuring value-weighted portfolios and large capitalization stocks. Stock characteristics traditionally related to momentum do not explain our results. Tests based on long-term reversals, the trading patterns of funds, their style peers, distant funds, and retail investors suggest that slow information diffusion explains the large momentum spreads and momentum reversals in low competition markets.