Quote from Babak:
I take your hand and lead you to the mountain side and show you the fossil in the layers of earth. I then ask you "If the earth is only 6000 years old, how do you explain this?"
And you say, "To confuse heretics like you!"
[sigh] So be it.
For those that have not had their common sense beaten out of them by the blogeon of academia I offer the following:
The January Effect:
1] My thread in the "Strategy Forum"
2] KCBT's strategy -- long Value Line Arith/short SPX
[for more see www.kcbt.com or www.mrci.com]
Why is it a fossil?
Because ....
1] It persists year after year
2] It offers risk adjusted positive returns
3] Those returns are WAY above commisison/slippage costs
Anyone who objectively and scientifically looks at those two examples of the January Effect and describes them as 'dents' in the EMH.....well...I dare say they themselves have a few dents in their skull.
And also, I wrote a paper for my Hons. Bachelor of Business degree which also proved 'stickiness' or hot hands. The error that most academics make in surveying this topic, specificaly, is that their time horizons are either too short or too long. Since returns are mean reverting after some time, they then proclaim EMH is true. Got an A+ on the paper and the supervising prof offered to co-author it with me for submission to a finance journal.
You still don't get it. Yes, there are ANOMALIES, BUT, as long as you don't offer a unifying model that explains them AND the general behavior of returns cross-sectionally and time-wise, showing anomalies is like showing a pothole in a road and saying "whoever says the road surface is smooth has dents in their heads." By the way, if indeed the Janurally effect was so easy to capitalize on, it would be exploited away. The fact that it's not shows it ain't so freaking easy. Also, the beauty of EHM is that (besides the fact that it makes perfect sense, unlike the alternatives the likes of you offer (or abscence thereof)), is that it's self-healing. You find smth that really works, you start trading on it and it will go away. What I have found and am trading on is already showing signs of going away and I'm only moving about 10 mil. And that's in large cap stocks.
By the way, the January effect has been shown to weaken lately as it has become more known.
As for the project you wrote for your "Hons. Bachelor of Business degree", it's a JOKE! Submitting it to a journal? You gotta be freaking kidding me. That prof either needed to have his head examined or was just flattering you, most likely. I have seen my share of projects written even by the best honor's kids. The are just that, honor's projects. You have no idea what standards have to be met to even think about submitting it to even a decent B journal. A bad C maybe.
The error in time horizons? What are you talking about? There are volumes of papers enough to fill the room you are sitting in examining hot hands in as many horizons as you could imagine and more. Naturally, if you mine the data long enough, you'll find some "not too long, but not too short" whatever horizon that seems to show persistence in positive returns. If you dig a 100 diff. such horizons, by type 1 error you are bound to find 5% of them will show what you are looking for at the 5% confidence level.
The error that most academics make in surveying this topic, specificaly, is that their time horizons are either too short or too long. Since returns are mean reverting after some time, they then proclaim EMH is true.
FYI, what you said makes no sense. How is "mean reverting after some time" related to the fact that they supposedly skipped some very important horizon you were so brilliant in digging up?
The only way to truly examine hot hands is with account level data. Is that what you did? I doubt it.
The absence of logic in your "convincing" arguments only goes on to show what a joke those honors reports are. So you should really keep that story to yourself man. It isn't as cool as you think.