In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. As a type of active management, it stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of technical analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis, which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable, and research on whether technical analysis offers any benefit has produced mixed results. It is distinguished from fundamental analysis, which considers a company's financial statements, health, and the overall state of the market and economy.
The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information.
The January effect is a hypothesis that there is a seasonal anomaly in the financial market where securities' prices increase in the month of January more than in any other month. This calendar effect would create an opportunity for investors to buy stocks for lower prices before January and sell them after their value increases. As with all calendar effects, if true, it would suggest that the market is not efficient, as market efficiency would suggest that this effect should disappear.
Market timing is the strategy of making buying or selling decisions of financial assets by attempting to predict future market price movements. The prediction may be based on an outlook of market or economic conditions resulting from technical or fundamental analysis. This is an investment strategy based on the outlook for an aggregate market rather than for a particular financial asset.
A market anomaly in a financial market is predictability that seems to be inconsistent with theories of asset prices. Standard theories include the capital asset pricing model and the Fama-French Three Factor Model, but a lack of agreement among academics about the proper theory leads many to refer to anomalies without a reference to a benchmark theory. Indeed, many academics simply refer to anomalies as "return predictors", avoiding the problem of defining a benchmark theory.
Buy and hold, also called position trading, is an investment strategy whereby an investor buys financial assets or non-financial assets such as real estate, to hold them long term, with the goal of realizing price appreciation, despite volatility.
Market sentiment, also known as investor attention, is the general prevailing attitude of investors as to anticipated price development in a market. This attitude is the accumulation of a variety of fundamental and technical factors, including price history, economic reports, seasonal factors, and national and world events. If investors expect upward price movement in the stock market, the sentiment is said to be bullish. On the contrary, if the market sentiment is bearish, most investors expect downward price movement. Market participants who maintain a static sentiment, regardless of market conditions, are described as permabulls and permabears respectively. Market sentiment is usually considered as a contrarian indicator: what most people expect is a good thing to bet against. Market sentiment is used because it is believed to be a good predictor of market moves, especially when it is more extreme. Very bearish sentiment is usually followed by the market going up more than normal, and vice versa. A bull market refers to a sustained period of either realized or expected price rises, whereas a bear market is used to describe when an index or stock has fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained length of time.
Momentum investing is a system of buying stocks or other securities that have had high returns over the past three to twelve months, and selling those that have had poor returns over the same period.
In financial economics and accounting research, post–earnings-announcement drift or PEAD is the tendency for a stock’s cumulative abnormal returns to drift in the direction of an earnings surprise for several weeks following an earnings announcement.
Sell in May and go away is an investment strategy for stocks based on a theory that the period from November to April inclusive has significantly stronger stock market growth on average than the other months. In such strategies, stock holdings are sold or minimized at about the start of May and the proceeds held in cash ; stocks are bought again in the autumn, typically around Halloween. "Sell in May" can be characterized as the belief that it is better to avoid holding stock during the summer period.
There are several concepts of efficiency for a financial market. The most widely discussed is informational or price efficiency, which is a measure of how quickly and completely the price of a single asset reflects available information about the asset's value. Other concepts include functional/operational efficiency, which is inversely related to the costs that investors bear for making transactions, and allocative efficiency, which is a measure of how far a market channels funds from ultimate lenders to ultimate borrowers in such a way that the funds are used in the most productive manner.
The adaptive market hypothesis, as proposed by Andrew Lo, is an attempt to reconcile economic theories based on the efficient market hypothesis with behavioral economics, by applying the principles of evolution to financial interactions: competition, adaptation, and natural selection. This view is part of a larger school of thought known as Evolutionary Economics.
Mean reversion is a financial term for the assumption that an asset's price will tend to converge to the average price over time.
In economics, a spillover is a positive or a negative, but more often negative, impact experienced in one region or across the world due to an independent event occurring from an unrelated environment.
In finance, momentum is the empirically observed tendency for rising asset prices or securities return to rise further, and falling prices to keep falling. For instance, it was shown that stocks with strong past performance continue to outperform stocks with poor past performance in the next period with an average excess return of about 1% per month. Momentum signals have been used by financial analysts in their buy and sell recommendations.
Stock market cycles are proposed patterns that proponents argue may exist in stock markets. Many such cycles have been proposed, such as tying stock market changes to political leadership, or fluctuations in commodity prices. Some stock market designs are universally recognized. However, many academics and professional investors are skeptical of any theory claiming to identify or predict stock market cycles precisely. Some sources argue identifying any such patterns as a "cycle" is a misnomer, because of their non-cyclical nature. Economists using efficient-market hypothesis say that asset prices reflect all available information meaning that it is impossible to systematically beat the market by taking advantage of such cycles.
The Congressional effect is a stock market phenomenon or calendar effect, where stock prices tend to show a correlation in performance and volatility to the operating schedules of the US Congress. The phenomenon was coined as “The Congressional effect” by Eric T. Singer, a New York based finance professional and mutual fund manager.
The price-to-book ratio, or P/B ratio, is a financial ratio used to compare a company's current market value to its book value. The calculation can be performed in two ways, but the result should be the same. In the first way, the company's market capitalization can be divided by the company's total book value from its balance sheet. The second way, using per-share values, is to divide the company's current share price by the book value per share. It is also known as the market-to-book ratio and the price-to-equity ratio, and its inverse is called the book-to-market ratio.
In investing and finance, the low-volatility anomaly is the observation that low-volatility stocks have higher returns than high-volatility stocks in most markets studied. This is an example of a stock market anomaly since it contradicts the central prediction of many financial theories that higher returns can only be realized by taking more risk.
Factor investing is an investment approach that involves targeting quantifiable firm characteristics or “factors” that can explain differences in stock returns. Security characteristics that may be included in a factor-based approach include size, low-volatility, value, momentum, asset growth, profitability, leverage, term and carry.
