Does the predictive power of variable moving average rules vanish over time and can we explain such tendencies?

Marcus Strobel and Benjamin R. Auer

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2018, vol. 53, issue C, 168-184

Abstract: Recent studies offer striking evidence that, in stock markets, the predictive power of fundamental variables and seasonal effects tends to diminish over time. In this article, we analyse whether this also holds for the popular variable moving average (VMA) rules of Brock et al. (1992). While previous research on this issue has strongly concentrated on US and emerging stock market indices, we fill a research gap by focussing on a wide range of developed market indices and individual stocks. Using a trend regression approach for a dataset covering 1972 to 2015, we find that most analysed trading rule specifications show negative trend coefficients. These results, robust in a variety of settings, indicate that VMA rule signals have steadily lost their ability to forecast future price movements accurately. Analysing several rationales for this outcome, we find that negative trends in the autocorrelation of stock returns are a highly promising explanation for the poorer performance of VMA rules because they are designed to capture autocorrelation.

Keywords: VMA rules; Predictability; Stock markets; Trend regression; Autocorrelation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056017307487
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:53:y:2018:i:c:p:168-184

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2017.10.012

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().