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Statistical arbitrage pairs trading strategies: Review and outlook

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  • Krauss, Christopher

Abstract

This survey reviews the growing literature on pairs trading frameworks, i.e., relative-value arbitrage strategies involving two or more securities. The available research is categorized into five groups: The distance approach uses nonparametric distance metrics to identify pairs trading opportunities. The cointegration approach relies on formal cointegration testing to unveil stationary spread time series. The time series approach focuses on finding optimal trading rules for mean-reverting spreads. The stochastic control approach aims at identifying optimal portfolio holdings in the legs of a pairs trade relative to other available securities. The category "other approaches" contains further relevant pairs trading frameworks with only a limited set of supporting literature. Drawing from this large set of research consisting of more than 90 papers, an in-depth assessment of each approach is performed, ultimately revealing strengths and weaknesses relevant for further research and for implementation.

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  • Krauss, Christopher, 2015. "Statistical arbitrage pairs trading strategies: Review and outlook," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 09/2015, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:092015
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    Cited by:

    1. Krauss, Christopher & Stübinger, Johannes, 2015. "Nonlinear dependence modeling with bivariate copulas: Statistical arbitrage pairs trading on the S&P 100," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 15/2015, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    2. Tim Leung & Raphael Yan, 2018. "Optimal dynamic pairs trading of futures under a two-factor mean-reverting model," International Journal of Financial Engineering (IJFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-23, September.
    3. Chenyanzi Yu & Tianyang Xie, 2021. "Multivariate Pair Trading by Volatility & Model Adaption Trade-off," Papers 2106.09132, arXiv.org.
    4. Saran Ahuja & George Papanicolaou & Weiluo Ren & Tzu-Wei Yang, 2016. "Limit order trading with a mean reverting reference price," Papers 1607.00454, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2016.
    5. Krauss, Christopher & Herrmann, Klaus & Teis, Stefan, 2015. "On the power and size properties of cointegration tests in the light of high-frequency stylized facts," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 11/2015, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    6. Alexander Lipton & Marcos Lopez de Prado, 2020. "A closed-form solution for optimal mean-reverting trading strategies," Papers 2003.10502, arXiv.org.
    7. Clegg, Matthew & Krauss, Christopher, 2016. "Pairs trading with partial cointegration," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 05/2016, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.

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    Keywords

    statistical arbitrage; pairs trading; spread trading; relative-value arbitrage; meanreversion;
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