Evaluation of the Profitability of Momentum and Reversal Strategies of Industry in the Capital Market of Iran

Momentum and reverse strategies are two influential methods of market analysis that aim to predict future performance in different industries and to generate excess returns, applying historical information. The industry momentum claims the industries experiencing good (bad) performance in the past will provide this return in the future as well. We intend to examine the usefulness of the mentioned strategies. Moskowitz and Grinblatt (1999) focused on 20 industries and labeled three industries with the highest return as winning industries and three industries with the lowest return as losing industries. Also, Grobys and Kolari (2019) selected twentieth highest and lowest return as winning and losing industries. In this study, the statistical population includes all industries in the Tehran Security Exchange, during the years 2007 to 2017. Based on this research, a diverse set of portfolios of different industries has been examined separately for winners and losers at different times, in which the winning industries are the five industries with the highest return and the losing industries are the five industries with the lowest return. After calculating the returns of the winning and losing industries every month in 37 industries, quarterly, six-month, twelve-month, and twenty-four-month cumulative returns have been calculated as a sample and used to perform the tests. The general hypothesis of the research is that the return of the previous winner portfolios formed in the Fi period and holding in the Hj period is equal to the return of the previous loser portfolios formed in the Fi period and holding in the Hi period. The method of testing the hypothesis of this research is the test of comparing the means of two societies for two momentary and reverse industry strategies. To compare the returns of strategies, ttest and Leven variance homogeneity test were used, and to test the hypotheses, SPSS software was used. Comparison of 30 different scenarios of portfolio returns in different formation and holding periods indicates that out of 30 cases, in 22 cases the industry momentum strategy is superior, which has happened often in shorter periods. For example, during the one-month formation and holding period (F1, H1) of the portfolio, the momentum strategy at the 95% confidence level is more profitable than the reverse strategy. In addition, in 8 cases, the reverse momentum of the industry has been more useful, most of which occurred in the holding periods of one year or more. Comparisons show that, with increasing the period of portfolio formation, the returns of these two strategies are balanced and gradually in the holding periods of one year and more, the superiority of the reverse momentum strategy is evident. In total, in 8 cases, the difference in the profitability of the two strategies is significant, and in 5 cases are related to the momentum strategy, consisted of periods (F1, H1), (F1, H3), (F9, H6), (F12, H1), (F12, H3) and in other periods including (F3, H24), (F9, H24) and (F12, H24) reverse strategy had a significant advantage. The statistical sample of this study consists of 37 industries in the period from 2007 to 2017 in monthly periods, applying 60 strategies in terms of Formation and Hold of portfolios in diverse periods. To investigate the profitability of such strategies, the equality of means hypotheses and the homogeneity of variance test were examined. The results indicate that each of these approaches is superior over a certain period. In some shorter periods, the momentum of the industry has excess returns than the reverse industry; however, when the Hold period is longer than one year, the reverse strategy tends to be more profitable than the momentum strategy. In similar studies, Moskowitz and Grinblatt (1999) showed that in shorter periods, only the momentum profitability of the industry is higher. Grobys and Kolari (2019) also concluded that industry portfolios that had more returns in forming periods significantly had higher returns in the forming periods than portfolios that performed poorly in the period. The main finding of Huberg and Philips (2018) also indicates the momentum profitability of the industry. The results of the present study also reveal that in most of the shorter periods, the industry momentum has been more profitable than the industry reverse momentum, which is consistent with the results of the above researches, although this advantage is not statistically significant in all cases.