This paper reexamines the profitability of loser, winner and contrarian portfolios in the Chinese stock market using monthly data of all stocks traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange covering the period from January 1997 to December 2012. We find evidence of short-term and long-term contrarian profitability in the whole sample period when the estimation and holding horizons are 1 month or longer than 12 months and the annualized return of contrarian portfolios increases with the estimation and holding horizons. We perform subperiod analysis and find that the long-term contrarian effect is significant in both bullish and bearish states, while the short-term contrarian effect disappears in bullish states. We compare the performance of contrarian portfolios based on different grouping manners in the estimation period and unveil that decile grouping outperforms quintile grouping and tertile grouping, which is more evident and robust in the long run. Generally, loser portfolios and winner portfolios have positive returns and loser portfolios perform much better than winner portfolios. Both loser and winner portfolios in bullish states perform better than those in the whole sample period. In contrast, loser and winner portfolios have smaller returns in bearish states, in which loser portfolio returns are significant only in the long term and winner portfolio returns become insignificant. These results are robust to the one-month skipping between the estimation and holding periods and for the two stock exchanges. Our findings show that the Chinese stock market is not efficient in the weak form. These findings also have obvious practical implications for financial practitioners.

This paper investigates the time-varying risk-premium relation of the Chinese stock markets within the framework of cross-sectional momentum and contrarian effects by adopting the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the FrenchFama three factor model. The evolving arbitrage opportunities are also studied by quantifying the performance of time-varying cross-sectional momentum and contrarian effects in the Chinese stock markets. The relation between the contrarian profitability and market condition factors that could characterize the investment context is also investigated. The results reveal that the risk-premium relation varies over time, and the arbitrage opportunities based on the contrarian portfolios wax and wane over time. The performance of contrarian portfolios are highly dependent on several market conditions. The periods with upward trend of market state, higher market volatility and liquidity, lower macroeconomics uncertainty are related to higher contrarian profitability. These findings are consistent with the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis and have practical implications for market participants.

This paper concentrates on the time series momentum or contrarian effects in the Chinese stock market. We evaluate the performance of the time series momentum strategy applied to major stock indices in mainland China and explore the relation between the performance of time series momentum strategies and some firm-specific characteristics. Our findings indicate that there is a time series momentum effect in the short run and a contrarian effect in the long run in the Chinese stock market. The performances of the time series momentum and contrarian strategies are highly dependent on the look-back and holding periods and firm-specific characteristics.Comment: 11 Latex pages including 1 figure and 4 table

China's stock market is the largest emerging market in the world. It is widely accepted that the Chinese stock market is far from e±ciency and it possesses possible linear and nonlinear dependencies. We study the predictability of returns in the Chinese stock market by employing the wild bootstrap automatic variance ratio test and the generalized spectral test. We¯nd that the return predictability vary over time and a signi¯cant return predictability is observed around market turmoils. Our¯ndings are consistent with the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis (AMH) and have practical implications for market participants and policy makers. A predictability index can be constructed for each asset, which might help warn a crisis is in store, ease the development of the ongoing bubble, and stabilize the market.

This paper focuses on the weekly idiosyncratic momentum (IMOM) as well as its risk-adjusted versions with respect to various idiosyncratic risk metrics. Using the A-share individual stocks in the Chinese market from January 1997 to December 2017, we first evaluate the performance of the weekly momentum and idiosyncratic momentum based on raw returns and idiosyncratic returns, respectively. After that the univariate portfolio analysis is conducted to investigate the return predictability with respect to various idiosyncratic risk metrics. Further, we perform a comparative study on the performance of the IMOM portfolios with respect to various risk metrics. At last, we explore the possible explanations to the IMOM as well as risk-based IMOM portfolios. We find that 1) there is a prevailing contrarian effect and a IMOM effect for the whole sample; 2) a negative relation exists between most of the idiosyncratic risk metrics and the cross-sectional returns, and better performance is found that is linked to idiosyncratic volatility (IVol) and maximum drawdowns (IMDs); 3) additionally, the IVol-based and IMD-based IMOM portfolios exhibit a better explanatory power to the IMOM portfolios with respect to other risk metrics; 4) finally, higher profitability of the IMOM as well as IVol-based and IMD-based IMOM portfolios is found to be related to upside market states, high levels of liquidity and high levels of investor sentiment. (Wei-Xing Zhou) 1 Literature regarding the momentum (contrarian) effect are abundant, and Asness et al. (2013) conduct the comprehensive research on crosssectional momentum effect.