A REALITY CHECK ON TECHNICAL TRADING RULE PROFITS IN THE US FUTURES MARKETS

This article investigates the profitability of technical trading rules in U.S. futures markets during the years 1985-2004. Statistical significance of performance across the trading rules is evaluated using White's Bootstrap Reality Check and Hansen's Superior Predictive Ability tests, which can directly measure the effect of data snooping by testing the performance of the best rule in the context of the full universe of technical trading rules. Results show that the best rules generate statistically significant economic profits for only two of 17 futures markets after correcting for data snooping biases. This evidence suggests that technical trading rules generally have not been profitable in the U.S. futures markets. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:633-659, 2010