The Dow Theory: William Peter Hamilton's Track Record Re-Considered

Stephen Brown (), William Goetzmann and Alok Kumar

New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires from New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-

Abstract: Alfred Cowles' (1934) test of the Dow Theory apparently provided strong evidence against the ability of Wall Street's most famous chartist to forecast the stock market. In this paper we review Cowles' evidence and find that it supports the contrary conclusion - that the Dow Theory, as applied by its major practitioner, William Peter Hamilton over the period 1902 to 1929, yielded positive risk-adjusted returns. A re-analysis of the Hamilton editorials suggests that his timing strategies yield high Sharpe ratios and positive alphas. Neural net modeling to replicate Hamilton's market calls provides interesting insight into the nature and content of the Dow Theory. This allows us to examine the properties of the Dow Theory itself out-of-sample.

Date: 1998-02-17
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:fth:nystfi:98-013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires from New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business- U.S.A.; New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics . 44 West 4th Street. New York, New York 10012-1126. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().