Value investing and technical analysis in Taiwan stock market

• This paper examines the role of moving average signals on value investing.
• The moving average strategy substantially outperforms the buy-and-hold strategy.
• We propose a new trading strategy based on moving average signals.
• The new investment strategy produces significantly positive abnormal returns.

Unlike the U.S. and most developed countries, Taiwan stock market has been widely documented to have no value premium. Prior studies on the value premium typically adopt a conventional approach proposed by Fama and French (1992), which suggests a buy-and-hold strategy with annual rebalancing. We argue that a sophisticated investor can do better (obtain higher returns) than a simple buy-and-hold strategy by timing the market with the help of some technical analysis. Specifically, we show that an application of a moving average timing strategy to portfolios sorted by book-to-market (BM) ratios could generate higher returns than the buy-and-hold strategy. Using common stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), we confirm that the moving average timing strategy does substantially outperform the buy-and-hold strategy. Taking advantage of this observation, we propose a zero-cost portfolio constructed by buying the highest BM portfolio, and short-selling the lowest BM portfolio based on trading signals issued by the moving average rule, and demonstrate that such a new investment strategy can produce significantly positive returns. Robustness of results obtained in this paper is further verified and consolidated by extending the empirical study with a different currency, alternative lag lengths, transaction cost, subperiod analysis, business cycles and market timing.