IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/somwrk/ysm109.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pairs Trading: Performance of a Relative Value Arbitrage Rule

Author

Listed:
  • William N. Goetzmann

    (Yale University, School of Management)

  • Evan Geov Gatev

    (Department of Finance)

  • K. Geert Rouwenhorst

    (School of Management)

Abstract

We test a Wall Street investment strategy known as "pairs trading" with daily data over the period 1962 through 1997. Stocks are matched into pairs according to minimum distance in historical normalized price space. We test the profitability of several trading rules with six-month trading periods over the 1962-1997 period, and find average annualized excess returns of up to 12 percent for a number of self-financing portfolios of top pairs. Part of these profits may be due to market microstructure effects. Nevertheless, our historical trading profits exceed a conservative estimate of transaction costs through most of the period. We bootstrap random pairs in order to distinguish pairs trading from pure mean-reversion strategies. The bootstrap results suggest that the ?pairs? effect differs from previously documented mean reversion profits.

Suggested Citation

  • William N. Goetzmann & Evan Geov Gatev & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 1998. "Pairs Trading: Performance of a Relative Value Arbitrage Rule," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm109, Yale School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=141615
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lakonishok, Josef & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1994. "Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1541-1578, December.
    2. Mark J Ready, 2002. "Profits from Technical Trading Rules," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 31(3), Fall.
    3. Lo, Andrew W & MacKinlay, A Craig, 1990. "Data-Snooping Biases in Tests of Financial Asset Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 431-467.
    4. Chen, Zhiwu & Knez, Peter J, 1995. "Measurement of Market Integration and Arbitrage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(2), pages 287-325.
    5. Bossaerts, Peter, 1988. "Common nonstationary components of asset prices," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 347-364.
    6. KENT D. DANIEL & David Hirshleifer & AVANIDHAR SUBRAHMANYAM, 2004. "A Theory of Overconfidence, Self-Attribution, and Security Market Under- and Over-reactions," Finance 0412006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Petersen, Mitchell A. & Fialkowski, David, 1994. "Posted versus effective spreads *1: Good prices or bad quotes?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 269-292, June.
    8. Charles M. C. Lee & James Myers & Bhaskaran Swaminathan, 1999. "What is the Intrinsic Value of the Dow?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1693-1741, October.
    9. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1995. "Overreaction, Delayed Reaction, and Contrarian Profits," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(4), pages 973-993.
    10. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1996. "Multifactor Explanations of Asset Pricing Anomalies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 55-84, March.
    11. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    12. Brock, William & Lakonishok, Josef & LeBaron, Blake, 1992. "Simple Technical Trading Rules and the Stochastic Properties of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1731-1764, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Osman Kilic & Joseph M. Marks & Kiseok Nam, 2022. "Predictable asset price dynamics, risk-return tradeoff, and investor behavior," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 749-791, August.
    2. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, January.
    3. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    4. Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2010. "The Cross†Section of Expected Stock Returns: What Have We Learnt from the Past Twenty†Five Years of Research?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(1), pages 27-42, January.
    5. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    6. Brennan, Michael J. & Chordia, Tarun & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1998. "Alternative factor specifications, security characteristics, and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 345-373, September.
    7. Lu, Tsung-Hsun, 2014. "The profitability of candlestick charting in the Taiwan stock market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 65-78.
    8. Harrison Hong & Terence Lim & Jeremy C. Stein, 2000. "Bad News Travels Slowly: Size, Analyst Coverage, and the Profitability of Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 265-295, February.
    9. Zura Kakushadze, 2014. "4-Factor Model for Overnight Returns," Papers 1410.5513, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2015.
    10. Meredith Beechey & David Gruen & James Vickery, 2000. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis: A Survey," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2000-01, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    11. Stefan Nagel, 2013. "Empirical Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 167-199, November.
    12. Evan Gatev & William Goetzmann & K. Rouwenhorst, 1998. "Pairs Trading: Performance of a Relative Value Arbitrage Rule," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm3, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Aug 2000.
    13. Schwert, G. William, 2003. "Anomalies and market efficiency," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 939-974, Elsevier.
    14. Walkshäusl, Christian, 2015. "Equity financing activities and European value-growth returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 27-40.
    15. Jonathan Lewellen & Jay Shanken, 2002. "Learning, Asset‐Pricing Tests, and Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 1113-1145, June.
    16. Hannah Lea Hühn & Hendrik Scholz, 2019. "Reversal and momentum patterns in weekly stock returns: European evidence," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 272-296, April.
    17. Zura Kakushadze & Willie Yu, 2016. "Multifactor Risk Models and Heterotic CAPM," Papers 1602.04902, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2016.
    18. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    19. Anton Astakhov & Tomas Havranek & Jiri Novak, 2019. "Firm Size And Stock Returns: A Quantitative Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5), pages 1463-1492, December.
    20. He, Xue-Zhong & Li, Kai, 2015. "Profitability of time series momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 140-157.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.