Combining Fundamental FSCORE and Equity Short-Term Reversals

The short-term reversal in stock returns is already a well known and well-established anomaly that appears to contradict the weak-form market efficiency. Strategy based on this anomaly buys past winners and sells past losers. A possible and sensible explanation of the short-term reversal phenomenon is the overreaction of investors. Research in the past focused primarily on noise trading and ignored the important role of fundamental information. Curiously, new research suggests that there is a need to study the impact of fundamental news on short-term return reversals where a nonparametric metric of fundamental strength (FSCORE) is used to measure the impact from fundamental information. The need to measure the impact mentioned above is clear – there is overwhelming evidence that investors underreact to fundamental news. Moreover, fundamental information metric has a persistent predictive effect on stock returns, which is consistent with the hypothesis of the slow diffusion of information and investor underreaction. Simply said, high FSCORE firms tend to earn much higher returns than low FSCORE firms. The paper has found significant evidence that recent losers with strong fundamental strength and recent winners with weak fundamental strength experience stronger reversals than other reversal portfolio strategies. A fundamental-anchored reversal strategy exploits this finding, and this reversal strategy could generate a high significant average monthly returns that outperform the profit from the unconditional and traditional reversal strategy. The paper primarily studies all common stocks; however, we present the data about large stocks since the small stocks bear their own unique features.

* For those interested in systematic quantitative value factor ETF implementation, here is a link to the Alpha Architect Quantitative Value ETF (strategy background), our partner. *

Fundamental reason

There are three reasons to use FSCORE. Firstly, FSCORE is a comprehensive metric of a firm’s fundamental strength, because this score synthesizes information from nine signals along three dimensions of a firm’s financial performance (profitability, change in financial leverage and liquidity, and change in operational efficiency). Secondly, the fundamental information is gathered directly from the financial statements, which obviates the measurement error problem. And lastly, FSCORE is a nonparametric measure, compared with a parametric approach, FSCORE is more robust and helps to reduce concerns over potential estimation biases. Results support the hypothesis that short-term reversals are influenced by both noise trading and investor underreaction to fundamental information. Also results from regression analysis suggest that both noise trading and fundamental information significantly influence stock returns on the short horizon. No doubt, there is a conclusion that investor underreaction to fundamental information coupled with noise trading can explain the observed empirical patterns in short-term reversals. Moreover, results indicate that the bid-ask spread cannot be the main source of the profitability for short-term reversals, and the results are not particularly sensitive to alternative definitions of fundamental strength. Last but not least, simple short-term reversal and industry-adjusted reversal strategies fail to be profitable in the presence of transaction costs; however, fundamental anchored reversal strategies are economically profitable even in the presence of transaction costs.

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Markets Traded
equities

Backtest period from source paper
1984-2015

Confidence in anomaly's validity
Moderately Strong

Indicative Performance
12.01%

Notes to Confidence in Anomaly's Validity

OOS back-test shows slightly negative performance. It looks, that strategy’s alpha is deteriorating in the out-of-sample period.


Notes to Indicative Performance

data from table 6, Panel A, Large stocks, annualized monthly performance (0,95%)


Period of Rebalancing
Monthly

Estimated Volatility
20.61%

Notes to Period of Rebalancing

Notes to Estimated Volatility

data from table 6, Panel A, Large stocks, annualized monthly volatility computed from t-stat (3,08)


Number of Traded Instruments
1000

Maximum Drawdown

Notes to Number of Traded Instruments

more or less, it depends on investor’s need for diversification, common stocks (share code 10 or 11) listed in NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ exchanges. Stocks with prices less than $5 at the end of formation period are excluded.


Notes to Maximum drawdown

not stated


Complexity Evaluation
Very complex strategy

Sharpe Ratio
0.39

Notes to Complexity Evaluation

Region
United States

Financial instruments
stocks

Simple trading strategy

The investment universe consists of common stocks (share code 10 or 11) listed in NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ exchanges. Stocks with prices less than $5 at the end of the formation period are excluded.

The range of FSCORE is from zero to nine points. Each signal is equal to one (zero) point if the signal indicates a positive (negative) financial performance. A firm scores one point if it has realized a positive return-on-assets (ROA), positive cash flow from operations, a positive change in ROA, a positive difference between net income from operations (Accrual), a decrease in the ratio of long-term debt to total assets, a positive change in the current ratio, no-issuance of new common equity, a positive change in gross margin ratio and lastly a positive change in asset turnover ratio. Firstly, construct a quarterly FSCORE using the most recently available quarterly financial statement information.

Monthly reversal data are matched each month with a most recently available quarterly FSCORE. The firm is classified as a fundamentally strong firm if the firm’s FSCORE is greater than or equal to seven (7-9), fundamentally middle firm (4-6) and fundamentally weak firm (0-3). Secondly, identify the large stocks subset – those in the top 40% of all sample stocks in terms of market capitalization at the end of formation month t. After that, stocks are sorted on the past 1-month returns and firm’s most recently available quarterly FSCORE. Take a long position in past losers with favourable fundamentals (7-9) and simultaneously a short position in past winners with unfavourable fundamentals (0-3). The strategy is equally weighted and rebalanced monthly.

For those interested in systematic quantitative value factor ETF implementation, here is a link to the Alpha Architect Quantitative Value ETF (strategy background).

Hedge for stocks during bear markets

Yes - Equity reversal strategy is usually a type of “liquidity providing” strategy, and as such, they usually perform well during market crises. However, reversal strategy is also naturally a “short volatility” strategy; its return increase mainly in the weeks following large stock market declines. Traders must be cautious during crises during days with high volatility as reversal strategies usually force traders to buy stocks which performed especially bad (and to sell short stocks with an extremely positive short term performance). This position is emotionally hard to open, and risk management of reversal strategies must also be very strict during these days. We recommend reading a research paper by Nagel: “Evaporating Liquidity” to gain insight into the behaviour of reversal strategies during crises.

Source paper
Out-of-sample strategy's implementation/validation in QuantConnect's framework (chart+statistics+code)
Other papers

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