Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance

The purpose of this paper is to expand the research on momentum strategies in the securities market. Specifically, it examines the momentum anomaly in respect to the commodity futures market, and closely follows recent work as studied by Miffre and Rallis (2007). This study identifies one statistica...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Calder, Dan, O'Grady, Thomas (Barry)
Format: Working Paper
Published: School of Economics and Finance, Curtin Business School 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/47003
_version_ 1848757715490308096
author Calder, Dan
O'Grady, Thomas (Barry)
author_facet Calder, Dan
O'Grady, Thomas (Barry)
author_sort Calder, Dan
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The purpose of this paper is to expand the research on momentum strategies in the securities market. Specifically, it examines the momentum anomaly in respect to the commodity futures market, and closely follows recent work as studied by Miffre and Rallis (2007). This study identifies one statistically significant short term (1 to 12 months) momentum strategy yielding a return of 7.7% a year. This return is found to be substantially higher during specific periods of the sample. The strategy?s average abnormal gain caused by the continuation of returns is shown to be robust to the risk based explanations posited by many authors of the topic. Since the risk explanations do not hold for the momentum anomaly, the alternative explanation indicates towards market inefficiency. The results from this study indicate that market inefficiency is a plausible explanation for momentum profits as realised. Specifically, the abnormal profits seem to be a consequence of irrational investor behaviour, which tends to lead to an under-reaction to new market information.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T09:32:30Z
format Working Paper
id curtin-20.500.11937-47003
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T09:32:30Z
publishDate 2009
publisher School of Economics and Finance, Curtin Business School
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-470032017-01-30T15:30:33Z Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance Calder, Dan O'Grady, Thomas (Barry) Momentum under-reaction hypothesis contrarian irrational investors overreaction hypothesis efficient market hypothesis The purpose of this paper is to expand the research on momentum strategies in the securities market. Specifically, it examines the momentum anomaly in respect to the commodity futures market, and closely follows recent work as studied by Miffre and Rallis (2007). This study identifies one statistically significant short term (1 to 12 months) momentum strategy yielding a return of 7.7% a year. This return is found to be substantially higher during specific periods of the sample. The strategy?s average abnormal gain caused by the continuation of returns is shown to be robust to the risk based explanations posited by many authors of the topic. Since the risk explanations do not hold for the momentum anomaly, the alternative explanation indicates towards market inefficiency. The results from this study indicate that market inefficiency is a plausible explanation for momentum profits as realised. Specifically, the abnormal profits seem to be a consequence of irrational investor behaviour, which tends to lead to an under-reaction to new market information. 2009 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/47003 School of Economics and Finance, Curtin Business School fulltext
spellingShingle Momentum
under-reaction hypothesis
contrarian
irrational investors
overreaction hypothesis
efficient market hypothesis
Calder, Dan
O'Grady, Thomas (Barry)
Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title_full Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title_fullStr Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title_full_unstemmed Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title_short Commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
title_sort commodity futures and momentum trading: implications for behavioural finance
topic Momentum
under-reaction hypothesis
contrarian
irrational investors
overreaction hypothesis
efficient market hypothesis
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/47003