Evaluating Dynamic Strategies: The Free Lunch Was No Banquet

Boston College Working Paper

28 Pages Posted: 27 Jan 2003

See all articles by Eric Jacquier

Eric Jacquier

Boston University School of Management; HEC Montreal - Department of Finance

Tong Yao

University of Iowa - Henry B. Tippie College of Business

Date Written: August 2002

Abstract

We examine the issues of evaluating the performance of technical trading rules applied to daily equity and exchange rates. First, we document the ability of the rules to predict mean, variance and higher moments of returns. Second, we contrast these often used measures with alternates more closely tied to the profitability of the rules, such as excess return on the buy-and-hold strategy and Sharpe ratio. While, as found by others, the evidence of predictability is statistically strong on very long samples of data, that on profitability is weaker. Third, we turn show that for realistic horizons below 10 years, the rules then do not consistently beat the buy-and-hold strategy. Moreover, when we consider measures of persistence in performance, the evidence is further weakened. Last, we incorporate the potential for data-snooping into the analysis. We use genetic algorithms, in a novel way, to quantify the effect of data-snooping in the evaluation of trading rules. We find that at horizons below 10 years, the bias due to data-snooping is so large that no true economic profitability remains. We also show that even sophisticated algorithms would have failed to yield profits in past 20 years. While we agree with others that "the party may have ended", our results show that any prior free lunch was no banquet.

Keywords: Data mining, Efficient markets, Genetic algorithm, Moving average, Technical analysis, Trading rule

JEL Classification: C12, C15, C63, G14

Suggested Citation

Jacquier, Eric and Yao, Tong, Evaluating Dynamic Strategies: The Free Lunch Was No Banquet (August 2002). Boston College Working Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=353261 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.353261

Eric Jacquier (Contact Author)

Boston University School of Management ( email )

595 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
United States

HEC Montreal - Department of Finance ( email )

3000 Chemin de la Cote-Sainte-Catherine
Montreal, QC H3T 2A7
Canada

Tong Yao

University of Iowa - Henry B. Tippie College of Business ( email )

Acquisitions
5020 Main Library
Iowa City, IA 52242-1000
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
603
Abstract Views
3,659
Rank
82,329
PlumX Metrics