Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) have gained popularity due to their abilities to generate an absolute return strategy. Little is known about how CTAs work and what variables are important to tune in order to create a profitable strategy. Some investors use CTA-like strategies to leverage their portfolio and create positive returns in times when the spot market is falling. The report is written for Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken and aims to give the bank and readers an understanding on how changes of parameters in a CTA strategy change the outcome of it with focus on three main measurements: Sharpe ratio, drawdown and total return.  The foundation of CTAs is that they rely on signals from some given sets of assets and make investments decisions solely based on them. CTAs can be rule-based with a binomial signal, or they can use a continual signal, like in the report. The thesis aims to recreate a CTA using a continuous momentum signal and with the signal, invest accordingly. Some different variables were tested, most importantly the report focuses on the weights of the assets and investigates if the momentum signal is good as it is or if a risk parity weighting is needed on top of the signal in order to generate a return that matches the expectations of a low drawdown and a high Sharpe ratio.  Beyond the weight allocation, different lookback periods of both the signal and weight were tested. A shorter lookback generated a quicker return that was more sensible to short trends on the market. Which in some cases was profitable but it also lost more of it accumulated return when the trend was "false". The equally weighted signal that only takes the trend into account when allocating the weights of the assets was more volatile it its returns and benefited from a long signal. The CTA results presented can only be seen as an index since it is rebalanced every rebalancing point, the frequency of those points was examined and the strategy was performing well if rebalanced once a week or once a month, every day and once a year did not yield a better result.  As expected, the CTA benefits from trend on the market, no matter the direction of it. The best periods for the CTA were when the market was very volatile, mainly 2008 and 2022. When there is no clear trend, the CTA reacts too slowly and often loses money. One important conclusion is that the CTA never should be used as an investment strategy on its own, rather as a hedging strategy that allocates a fraction of a total long-only portfolio.

本研究主要探討投資人的積極程度以及市場的樂觀程度是否會影響動能策略之獲利能力。本研究利用1973至2013年間美國個股進行實證研究，結果驗證了動能策略於樣本期間能有顯著的獲利。進一步的實證結果顯示，規模較小且交易量成長率較低的公司存在極短期(一個月內)反轉的現象。此外，在市場樂觀期間(較多的首次公開發行的公司家數、較高的消費者信心指數或較低的恐慌指數)動能策略之獲利能力較佳且顯著。因此，我們建議投資人能在市場樂觀期間對規模較小的公司進行動能策略，將可得到較高的預期超額報酬。 / The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether the activism of investors and the sentiment of the market can affect the profitability of the momentum strategy. Using individual firms during 1973 to 2013 as the sample, this study reexamines and confirms the profitability of the momentum strategy. The further empirical result shows that firms with smaller size and lower growth rate of trading volume exhibit a very short-term (within one month) reversal effect. In addition, during the optimistic period (years which have more firms conducting initial public offerings, higher consumer confidence index, or lower VIX), the profitability of the momentum strategy is significantly higher than that during the passive period. Therefore, a suggested trading strategy applying momentum strategy to small firms during the high sentiment period may yield a superior performance.