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Mapping Out Momentum

July 21, 2021
By: Andrew Li, David Turkington, State Street Associates

By Yimou Li and David Turkington


Is it better to focus on single-stock, industry or factor trends? And how does market risk and time horizon affect them? We use a unified framework to map out the distinct sources of momentum and reversal in the stock market.


A variety of stock momentum and reversal effects have been documented in financial literature, but it’s hard to unify these often disparate findings. We disentangle the overlapping effects of momentum and reversal to show where the most durable relationships lie. We drill into industry, factor, and security-specific momentum in US equities, separating high versus low market volatility, ‘past winners’ versus ‘past losers’, and the periods before and after the global financial crisis. We find that many distinct sources of momentum and reversal coexist, short term reversal has intensified post-2010, winning sectors tend to crash more than winning factors, and more.


Get the summary here.

Author Bios
Andrew Li
Andrew Li is Head of State Street Associates APAC. Andrew’s research focuses on leveraging quantitative models to tackle investment challenges. Andrew is a frequent presenter at industry conferences, has published several articles on the investment applications of AI in the Journal of Financial Data Science, and led the development of State Street Associates’ AI/machine learning applications and tools. Andrew received his Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University and Master of Finance from MIT. Andrew is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
David Turkington
David Turkington is Senior Managing Director and Head of State Street Associates, State Street Markets’ decades-long partnership with renowned academics that produces innovative research on markets and investment strategy. David is a frequent presenter at industry conferences, has published more than 40 research articles in a range of journals, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments. He is the co-author of three books including “Asset Allocation: From Theory to Practice and Beyond” and “Prediction Revisited: The Importance of Observation.” His published research has received the 2010 Graham and Dodd Scroll Award, five Bernstein-Fabozzi/Jacobs-Levy Outstanding Article Awards, the 2013 Peter L. Bernstein Award for best paper in an Institutional Investor journal, the 2021 and 2023 Roger F. Murray First Prize for outstanding research presented at the Q Group seminars, and the 2022 and 2023 Harry Markowitz awards for best paper in the Journal of Investment Management.
State Street Associates
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1. Peter L. Bernstein Award for Best Article in an Institutional Investor Journal in 2013; Bernstein-Fabozzi/Jacobs-Levy Award for Outstanding Article in the Journal of Portfolio Management in 2006, 2009, 2011, 2013 (2), 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021; Graham & Dodd Scroll Award for article in the Financial Analysts Journal in 2002 and 2010. Roger F. Murray First Prize for Research Presented at the Q Group Conference in 2012, 2021, 2023. Harry M. Markowitz Award for Best Paper in the Journal of Investment Management in 2022, 2023. Doriot Award for Best Private Equity Research Paper in 2022.