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Technical Analysis on the Bitcoin Market: Trading Opportunities or Investors’ Pitfall?

Author

Listed:
  • Marina Resta

    (Department of Economics and Business Studies, University of Genova, 16126 Genova GE, Italy)

  • Paolo Pagnottoni

    (Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia PV, Italy)

  • Maria Elena De Giuli

    (Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia PV, Italy)

Abstract

In this paper we aimed to examine the profitability of technical trading rules in the Bitcoin market by using trend-following and mean-reverting strategies. We applied our strategies on the Bitcoin price series sampled both at 5-min intervals and on a daily basis, during the period 1 January 2012 to 20 August 2019. Our findings suggest that, overall, trading on daily data is more profitable than going intraday. Furthermore, we concluded that the Buy and Hold strategy outperforms the examined alternatives on an intraday basis, while Simple Moving Averages yield the best performances when dealing with daily data.

Suggested Citation

  • Marina Resta & Paolo Pagnottoni & Maria Elena De Giuli, 2020. "Technical Analysis on the Bitcoin Market: Trading Opportunities or Investors’ Pitfall?," Risks, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-15, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jrisks:v:8:y:2020:i:2:p:44-:d:354452
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Giudici, Paolo & Leach, Thomas & Pagnottoni, Paolo, 2022. "Libra or Librae? Basket based stablecoins to mitigate foreign exchange volatility spillovers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    4. Nicoló Andrea Caserini & Paolo Pagnottoni, 2022. "Effective transfer entropy to measure information flows in credit markets," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 31(4), pages 729-757, October.
    5. Ahmet Faruk Aysan & Asad Ul Islam Khan & Humeyra Topuz, 2021. "Bitcoin and Altcoins Price Dependency: Resilience and Portfolio Allocation in COVID-19 Outbreak," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-13, April.
    6. Łęt Blanka & Sobański Konrad & Świder Wojciech & Włosik Katarzyna, 2022. "Is the cryptocurrency market efficient? Evidence from an analysis of fundamental factors for Bitcoin and Ethereum," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 58(4), pages 351-370, December.
    7. Agosto, Arianna & Cerchiello, Paola & Pagnottoni, Paolo, 2022. "Sentiment, Google queries and explosivity in the cryptocurrency market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 605(C).

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