Financial market anomalies are constant subjects of debate because of their devotion form the foundational financial theories. Fama and French (2008) referred to the momentum effect as the premier anomaly. Thus, this study sought to apply the concept of momentum to examine three investment strategies. The first strategy was price momentum, an existing investment strategy but which was used as a comparison to the returns of the second and third strategies. The second strategy applied momentum to return on equity, operating cash flow and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, whilst the third strategy combined stocks with momentum in both stock price and respective fundamental variable.Using a non-probability sampling method, a total of 109 stock listed on the JSE over the period 1999-2010 were tested. Momentum in stock price and respective fundamentals was used to rank stocks into quintiles. The viability of each investment strategy was measured by comparing its average and risk adjusted returns to the market.The results revealed that fundamental momentum can beat market returns, with the highest amount of significant differences found using momentum in return on equity. The combination strategy also reported results of beating the market, with the higest amount of significant differences found using the 12 month fundamental momentum combined with 6 month price momentum. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The present thesis is focused on speculative behavior of investors in financial markets. More precisely, the thesis consists of five papers and takes a closer look at two speculation driven financial market anomalies, the overreaction hypothesis and the momentum effect, and considers them in two financial markets, cryptocurrency and commodity markets.

In financial markets, momentum effect can be defined as the tendency of prices to maintain their short term movements. On the other hand, reversal effect is usually understood to be the change in direction of long term price movements. This paper examines whether momentum and reversal effects were in evidence in the Brazilian stock market between January 1999 and June 2012. After calculating 1296 trading strategies, no evidence of reversal effect is found. With regard to momentum effect, some weak evidence is presented for the very short term. Exposure to risk factors can explain returns on strategies, including returns on momentum strategies. The results are borne out with different market proxy specifications and size subsamples. When compared to previous studies, the results raise the question of whether the reversal effect is vanishing from the Brazilian stock market and whether the traces of momentum are sufficient to confirm its existence. Furthermore, evidence of seasonality is found for June in momentum strategies and for November in both reversal and momentum strategies. Subsequent tests reveal that the effects of seasonality are limited to small stocks. / Nos mercados financeiros, o efeito momento pode ser definido como a tendência dos preços em manter seus movimentos de curto prazo. Por outro lado, o efeito contrário é geralmente entendido como a mudança na direção dos movimentos de longo prazo dos preços. O presente trabalho examina a existência dos efeitos momento e contrário no mercado acionário brasileiro no período compreendido entre janeiro de 1999 e junho de 2012. A partir do cálculo de 1296 estratégias de investimento, nenhuma evidência de efeito contrário é encontrada. Com relação ao efeito momento, observou-se apenas uma fraca evidência no curtíssimo prazo. A exposição aos fatores de risco é capaz de explicar os retornos das estratégias, inclusive os retornos das estratégias de momento. Os resultados são robustos ao se utilizar diferentes especificações de proxy de mercado e subamostras de valor de mercado. Quando comparados a trabalhos anteriores, os resultados colocam em questão se o efeito contrário está desaparecendo no mercado acionário brasileiro e se as fracas evidências do efeito momento são suficientes para confirmar sua existência. Ademais, são observadas evidências de sazonalidade no mês de junho nas estratégias de momento e, no mês de novembro, em ambas as estratégias. Testes posteriores revelam que esses efeitos de sazonalidade estão restritos à subamostra de baixo valor de mercado.

The first part of thesis describes the Efficient Market Theory, its characteristics and forms. Another theoretical approach are Behavioral Finances that can also explain the stock market price making. The main topic is Financial Market Anomalies that defy the Efficient Market Theory. Anomalies state that an investor is able to achieve above average profits in the long term regularly. The thesis is focused on two anomalies selected for further testing on the data of companies traded on German exchange Xetra. Data was obtained from Yahoo Finance and processed for statistical tests. Anomalies occurrence was scarce, therefore it cannot be said that an investor is able to achieve above average profits in the long term regularly.

In financial markets, momentum effect can be defined as the tendency of prices to maintain their short term movements. On the other hand, reversal effect is usually understood to be the change in direction of long term price movements. This paper examines whether momentum and reversal effects were in evidence in the Brazilian stock market between January 1999 and June 2012. After calculating 1296 trading strategies, no evidence of reversal effect is found. With regard to momentum effect, some weak evidence is presented for the very short term. Exposure to risk factors can explain returns on strategies, including returns on momentum strategies. The results are borne out with different market proxy specifications and size subsamples. When compared to previous studies, the results raise the question of whether the reversal effect is vanishing from the Brazilian stock market and whether the traces of momentum are sufficient to confirm its existence. Furthermore, evidence of seasonality is found for June in momentum strategies and for November in both reversal and momentum strategies. Subsequent tests reveal that the effects of seasonality are limited to small stocks. / Nos mercados financeiros, o efeito momento pode ser definido como a tendência dos preços em manter seus movimentos de curto prazo. Por outro lado, o efeito contrário é geralmente entendido como a mudança na direção dos movimentos de longo prazo dos preços. O presente trabalho examina a existência dos efeitos momento e contrário no mercado acionário brasileiro no período compreendido entre janeiro de 1999 e junho de 2012. A partir do cálculo de 1296 estratégias de investimento, nenhuma evidência de efeito contrário é encontrada. Com relação ao efeito momento, observou-se apenas uma fraca evidência no curtíssimo prazo. A exposição aos fatores de risco é capaz de explicar os retornos das estratégias, inclusive os retornos das estratégias de momento. Os resultados são robustos ao se utilizar diferentes especificações de proxy de mercado e subamostras de valor de mercado. Quando comparados a trabalhos anteriores, os resultados colocam em questão se o efeito contrário está desaparecendo no mercado acionário brasileiro e se as fracas evidências do efeito momento são suficientes para confirmar sua existência. Ademais, são observadas evidências de sazonalidade no mês de junho nas estratégias de momento e, no mês de novembro, em ambas as estratégias. Testes posteriores revelam que esses efeitos de sazonalidade estão restritos à subamostra de baixo valor de mercado.

One could argue that the most discussed topic in finance is whether or not it is possible to “beat the market”. Even though many people claim to do this, there is little evidence to support the idea that one can consistently beat the market over a long period of time. There are indeed several examples of investors who have managed to outperform the market consistently for a long time, but the efforts of these individuals or institutions could by many be considered to be pure luck. One of the many strategies that have been evaluated by several researchers and is said to generate a risk adjusted return greater than that of the market, is one based on the P/E-effect. This strategy is based on the financial ratio P/E – price divided by earnings – and used by constructing portfolios consisting of stocks with low P/E ratios. Several studies have confirmed the existence of the P/E-effect on various stock markets around the world and over different time periods. On the Swedish market, however, few studies have generated the same results. Most of these studies can be considered to be insufficient with regards to sample sizes and methods, spawning a need for more extensive studies. We have examined the P/E strategy on the Swedish Stock Exchange (SSE) between 2004 and 2012. The sample included 358 companies (excluding financial companies) with available necessary data. The stocks were divided into five portfolios based on their yearly P/E ratios (low to high), upon which the monthly returns of the individual stocks were calculated using a logarithmic formula. The returns were also risk adjusted using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), followed by a regression analysis to see if possible abnormal returns could be considered to be statistically significant for the examined time period. The results of our study indicate that the P/E effect is not present on the Swedish Stock Exchange during the examined time period, and we therefore conclude that it was not possible to utilize a strategy based on the P/E effect between 2004 and 2012 in order to achieve an abnormal return. The results can be used to argue that the Swedish stock market is more efficient than for example the U.S. stock market where the P/E effect has been found to exist.

<p>The cross-sectional variation of stock returns used to be described by the Capital Asset Pricing Model until the early 90‟s. Anomalies, such as, book-to-market effect and small firm effect undermined CAPM‟s ability to explain stock returns and Fama & French (1992) have shown that simple firm attributes, like, firm size and book-to-market value can explain the returns far better than Beta. Following Fama & French many other researchers examine the explanatory powers of CAPM and other asset pricing models. However, most of those studies use US data. There are some researches done in different countries than US, however more out-of-sample studies need to be conducted.</p><p>To our knowledge there are very few studies using the Swedish data and this thesis contributes to that small pool of studies. Moreover, the studies testing the CAPM use the unconditional version of the model. There are some papers suggesting the use of a conditional CAPM that would exhibit better explanatory powers than the unconditional CAPM. Different ways of conditioning the CAPM have been proposed, but one that we think is the least complex and possible to make use of in the business world is the dual-beta model. This conditional CAPM assumes a different relationship between beta and stock returns during the up markets and down markets. Furthermore, the model has not thoroughly been tested outside the US. Our study is the first to use the dual-beta model in Sweden. In addition, the momentum effect has lately been given some attention and Fama & French‟s (1993) three factor model has not been able to explain the abnormal returns related to that anomaly. We test the Fama & French three factor model, CAPM and Carhart‟s four factor model‟s explanatory abilities of the momentum effect using Swedish stock returns. Ultimately, our aim is to find the best model that describes stock return cross-section on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.</p><p>We use returns of all the non-financial firms listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange between September, 1997 and April, 2010. The number of companies included in our time sample is 366. The results of our tests indicate that the small firm effect, book-to-market effect and the momentum effect are not present on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Consequently, the CAPM emerges as the one model that explains stock return cross-section better than the other models suggesting that Beta is still a proper measure of risk. Furthermore, the conditional version of CAPM describes the stock return variation far better than the unconditional CAPM. This implies using different Betas to estimate risk during up market conditions and down market conditions.</p>

The cross-sectional variation of stock returns used to be described by the Capital Asset Pricing Model until the early 90‟s. Anomalies, such as, book-to-market effect and small firm effect undermined CAPM‟s ability to explain stock returns and Fama &amp; French (1992) have shown that simple firm attributes, like, firm size and book-to-market value can explain the returns far better than Beta. Following Fama &amp; French many other researchers examine the explanatory powers of CAPM and other asset pricing models. However, most of those studies use US data. There are some researches done in different countries than US, however more out-of-sample studies need to be conducted. To our knowledge there are very few studies using the Swedish data and this thesis contributes to that small pool of studies. Moreover, the studies testing the CAPM use the unconditional version of the model. There are some papers suggesting the use of a conditional CAPM that would exhibit better explanatory powers than the unconditional CAPM. Different ways of conditioning the CAPM have been proposed, but one that we think is the least complex and possible to make use of in the business world is the dual-beta model. This conditional CAPM assumes a different relationship between beta and stock returns during the up markets and down markets. Furthermore, the model has not thoroughly been tested outside the US. Our study is the first to use the dual-beta model in Sweden. In addition, the momentum effect has lately been given some attention and Fama &amp; French‟s (1993) three factor model has not been able to explain the abnormal returns related to that anomaly. We test the Fama &amp; French three factor model, CAPM and Carhart‟s four factor model‟s explanatory abilities of the momentum effect using Swedish stock returns. Ultimately, our aim is to find the best model that describes stock return cross-section on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use returns of all the non-financial firms listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange between September, 1997 and April, 2010. The number of companies included in our time sample is 366. The results of our tests indicate that the small firm effect, book-to-market effect and the momentum effect are not present on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Consequently, the CAPM emerges as the one model that explains stock return cross-section better than the other models suggesting that Beta is still a proper measure of risk. Furthermore, the conditional version of CAPM describes the stock return variation far better than the unconditional CAPM. This implies using different Betas to estimate risk during up market conditions and down market conditions.