Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Returns To Buying Winners And Selling Losers: A Look At Cryptocurrencies, Daniel Walker

CMC Senior Theses

This paper is, to my knowledge, one of the first ever to examine the effectiveness of price momentum trading strategies applied to cryptocurrencies. Using aggregate OHLCV (Open, High, Low, Close, Volume) data on cryptocurrency pairs from Poloniex, Bittrex, and Bitfinex, I apply Jegadeesh and Titman’s classic -month/-month momentum trading strategy, reporting annual returns with and without incorporating trading fees. Portfolios are resampled daily, weekly, and monthly, testing lookback and holding periods ranging from one day to one year. The results show that trading cryptocurrencies using momentum strategies derives returns that rapidly increase the more often portfolios are resampled, with the …