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Over the past three decades, numerous conceptual and empirical studies have discussed momentum investment strategies’ presence, pervasiveness and persistence. However, science mapping in the field is inadequate. Hence, this study aims to comprehend and explore current dynamics, understand knowledge progression, elicit trends through thematic map analysis, synthesize knowledge structures and provide future research directions in this domain.

The study applies bibliometric analysis on 562 Scopus indexed articles from 1986 to 2021. Biblioshiny version 3.1.4, a Web-based application included in Bibiliometrix package developed in R-language (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017), was used to examine: the most prominent articles, journals, authors, institutions and countries and to understand the thematic evolution and to elicit trends through the synthesis of knowledge structures including conceptual, intellectual and social structures of the field.

Motor themes, basic transverse, niche and emerging and declining themes were identified using (Callon, 1991) strategic thematic map. Besides, four major clusters based on a cocitation network of documents were identified: empirical evidence and drivers of momentum returns, theories explaining momentum returns and implications for asset pricing and market efficiency, avoiding momentum crashes and momentum in alternative asset classes, alternative explanations for momentum returns. The study infers that momentum research is becoming multidisciplinary given the dominance of behavioral theories and economic aspects in explaining the persistence of momentum profits and offers future research directions.

The study deploys bibliometric analysis, appropriate for deriving insights from the vast extant literature. However, a meta-analysis might offer deeper insights into specific dimensions of the research topic. Besides, the study’s findings are based on Scopus indexed articles analyzed using bibilioshiny; the database and software limitations might have affected the findings.

The study is a ready reckoner for scholars who intend to recognize the evolution of momentum investment strategies, current dynamics and future research direction. The study offers practitioners insights into efficiently designing and deploying momentum investment strategies and ways to avoid momentum crashes.

The study offers insights into the irrational behavior and systematic errors committed by market participants that helps regulators and policymakers to direct investors’ educational efforts to minimize systematic behavioral errors and related adverse financial consequences.

This comprehensive study on momentum investment strategies evaluates research trends and current dynamics draws a thematic map, knowledge progression in the field and offers future research directions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate if there are any momentum patterns in stock and sectoral returns and if they can be explained by the risk factors.

The methodology involves portfolio generation based on company characteristics and short‐term prior return (six to 12 months). The characteristic‐sorted portfolios are then regressed on risk factors using one‐factor (CAPM) and multi‐factor model (Fama French model and four‐factor model involving three Fama French factors and an additional sectoral momentum factor).

The authors find momentum profits in Indian context for prior return portfolios which are stronger for 6‐6 compared to 12‐12 strategies. These momentum profits are larger for some characteristic‐sorted portfolios. Risk models such as CAPM and Fama French model fail to capture momentum profits. In fact, winner portfolios generally comprise large firm and high P/B stocks, thus defying the risk story. Some zero investment momentum‐based trading strategies do provide significant payoffs. The authors also observe momentum profits in sectoral returns. A part of stock momentum profits is captured by sectoral factor, thus implying that it may mainly be an outcome of sectoral momentum.

The findings are pertinent for portfolio managers and investment analysts who are continuously in pursuit of trading strategies that provide extra normal returns. From an academic point of view, the authors suggest that sectoral factor should be used in the multi‐factor framework for explaining asset returns.

The study contributes to the asset pricing and behavioral literature from emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to assess trading strategies adopted by each large trader group and examine their effects on the volatility in the interest rate futures markets.

The Grinblatt et al.'s (1995) measure of momentum strategy is used to estimate the degree momentum and contrarian strategies. Then, regression analysis is used to determine the effects of trading strategies on volatility.

Up until 2005, the trades by non-clearing member firms in the futures market were separated from institutional traders providing us the opportunity to study trading strategies adopted by large distinct trading groups and its effects on volatility in the futures markets. It is found that individual traders use momentum strategy, whereas market makers and institutional traders use contrarian strategy. Momentum strategy adopted by individual traders increases volatility whereas contrarian strategy dampens volatility. Moreover, it is found that institutional traders engage more actively in contrarian trading when individual traders cause excessive volatility. The two distinct trading groups were separately tracked prior to 2005 giving us a unique window to determine the effect of the traders that conduct momentum trading as opposed to the ones that are contrarian traders. After the reclassification, the institutional trading group exhibited weaker contrarian strategy which can be attributed to the inclusion of non-clearing firm traders.

This study documents the first empirical evidence that shows off-exchange futures trader group is not composed of only pure noise makers, but there are short-term forecasters in its group. The authors also show a unique finding that noises caused by off-exchange group is from momentum strategy that they use, whereas contrarian strategy is used by institutional trader lower volatility.

Momentum strategies exhibit quarterly seasonality, earning significantly higher average strategy returns in the third month of the quarter than the first month. The authors evaluate the magnitude of quarterly seasonality in various momentum strategies to examine the relation between quarterly seasonality and risk-adjusted monthly returns.

The authors construct long-short portfolios for various types of momentum strategies and calculate the average returns of these portfolios in the three months of the quarter. They also calculate the average changes in institutional ownership across the different portfolios.

The authors demonstrate that quarterly seasonality is directly associated with quarterly changes in net purchases by institutional investors. Additionally, they show that near-term price momentum exhibits more seasonality than other momentum strategies, consistent with institutional investor incentives.

Researchers studying momentum should understand that quarterly seasonality increases the standard deviation of monthly returns for different types of momentum strategies.

Individual investors and investment managers should consider whether it is early or late in the calendar quarter when implementing momentum strategies.

Quarterly seasonality explains several seemingly independent findings in the momentum literature. In cases where researchers show one momentum strategy outperforms another on a risk-adjusted basis, the authors find that the superior strategy exhibits less quarterly seasonality. This pattern holds across types of momentum strategies, strategy formation periods and asset classes.

This study develops an environment, social, and governance (ESG) momentum strategy by combining information about ESG scores and the momentum effect. This study, subsequently, applies the ESG momentum strategy to Taiwanese and Japanese stock markets and investigates the performance of the ESG momentum strategy in each market. Detailed comparisons of the ESG scores and ESG momentum performance between the two markets are conducted. The empirical results show that the ESG momentum strategy can obtain enhanced profits in the Taiwanese market, while the ESG momentum strategy cannot lead to substantial profits in the Japanese market. In addition, the ESG momentum effect in the Taiwanese market can last for three years after portfolio formation. In the Japanese market, the ESG contrarian strategy may deliver better profits than the ESG momentum strategy.

This research study aims to design a novel risk-managed time-series momentum approach. The present study also examines the time-series momentum effect in the Indian equity market. Apart from this, the study also proposes a novel risk-managed time-series momentum approach.

The study considers the adjusted monthly closing prices of the stocks listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange from January 1996 to December 2020 to formulate long-short portfolios. Newey–West t statistics were used to test the significance of momentum returns. The present research has considered standard risk factors, i.e. market, size and value, to evaluate the risk-adjusted performance of time-series momentum portfolios.

The present research reports a substantial absolute momentum effect in the Indian equity market. However, absolute momentum strategies are exposed to occasional severe losses. The proposed time-series momentum approach not only yields 2.5 times higher return than the standard time-series momentum approach but also causes substantial enhancement in downside risks and higher-order moments.

The study's outcomes offer valuable insights for professional investors, capital market regulators and asset management companies.

This study is one of the pioneers attempting to test the time-series momentum effect in emerging economies. Besides, current research contributes to the escalating literature on risk-managed momentum by suggesting a novel revised time-series momentum approach.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of industrial diversification on the profitability of contrarian and momentum strategies.

Using monthly returns, the weighted relative strength strategy (WRSS) is applied to 249 American listed stocks from January 1994 to April 2004. To study the impact of the 2000 crash on the results, the WRSS strategy during the 01/1994‐03/2000 and 04/2000‐04/2004 sub‐periods was implemented. Then, firms are classified, according to the intensity of their industrial diversification by Ward's method of hierarchical cluster analysis, into two sub‐samples: the diversified and non‐diversified samples. The WRSS strategy was re‐implemented on these sub‐samples. Finally, the Bootstrap without replacement is used to explore the risk‐based explanation of the trading strategies' profitability.

Results show that the momentum strategy seems to be no more profitable in the recent years. In fact, while momentum strategies earn large positive and significant returns before the 2000 crash, these returns are negative after the crash. Moreover, before the crash, the momentum effect was more pronounced for the non‐diversified sample. After the crash, a contrarian effect more important for this sample was identified. Finally, the Bootstrap without replacement results do not support the risk‐based explanation.

Future research may study the impact of diversification on investor psychology.

Diversified firms are efficiently valued. However, specialized firms are not correctly valued.

This is the first study that shows that contrarian or momentum portfolios formed by industrial diversification did not yield significant return.

The main purpose of this study is to enunciate the underlying factors that enhance the performance of scaled momentum strategies.

In previous studies, the negative relationship between the lagged volatility and future return of momentum strategy is exploited to manage the risk. But this negative relationship only holds when volatility is higher, further the volatility is shown to be persistent. The implication of these two characteristics is important and this paper highlights that.

The higher performance of the scaled momentum strategies for the US market is linked with the length of the investment horizon. The traditional asset pricing models fail to explain this relationship. However, the authors find that the excess variance loaded on the long side of these strategies is one important explanation of this horizon bound performance of these strategies.

This study highlights that the volatility scaled momentum strategy has higher gains as the investment horizon increases. Therefore, it is an advisable investment strategy for the pension fund industry.

Momentum strategy is unique as it fulfils two criteria of performance enhancement through volatility scaling, such as, the persistent in volatility and its negative relationship with the returns. However, the impact on the performance of the negative relationship between volatility and return that only exist in highest volatility related states is not discussed. The authors have shown that this aspect of volatility and return relationship of the momentum strategy has an important bearing on the performance of the volatility scaled momentum strategies.

Highlights of the Paper

1. This study finds that the Sharpe ratios and the alphas of the volatility scaled strategies increase as the investment horizon increases.

2. This is because the volatility series are highly persistent and the negative predictive relationship between the volatility and future momentum returns only exist when the volatility is higher. The impact of these two characteristics of the volatility series on the performance of the scaled momentum strategies is not discussed in the literature.

3. We find that the scaled strategies invest more/less when the volatility of the momentum strategy is lower/higher. By investing less when volatility is higher, the scaled strategies avoid momentum crashes and lessens the contribution of the variance from the short side in the overall variance of these strategies.

4. It is further shown that the higher performance of the volatility scaled strategies, at each investment related horizon can be explained by the higher variance loaded on the long side of such strategies in comparison to the traditional momentum strategy.

This study finds that the Sharpe ratios and the alphas of the volatility scaled strategies increase as the investment horizon increases.

This is because the volatility series are highly persistent and the negative predictive relationship between the volatility and future momentum returns only exist when the volatility is higher. The impact of these two characteristics of the volatility series on the performance of the scaled momentum strategies is not discussed in the literature.

We find that the scaled strategies invest more/less when the volatility of the momentum strategy is lower/higher. By investing less when volatility is higher, the scaled strategies avoid momentum crashes and lessens the contribution of the variance from the short side in the overall variance of these strategies.

It is further shown that the higher performance of the volatility scaled strategies, at each investment related horizon can be explained by the higher variance loaded on the long side of such strategies in comparison to the traditional momentum strategy.

Motivated by the debate on the patterns and sources of commodity futures returns, this paper investigates the performance of three investment trading strategies, namely, the momentum strategy of Jegadeesh and Titman (1993), the 52-week high momentum strategy of George and Hwang (2004) and the pairs trading strategy of Gatev et al. (2006) in the commodity futures market.

The three strategies are those given by Jegadeesh and Titman (1993), George and Hwang (2004) and Gatev et al. (2006), respectively.

The authors find that there is no significant reversal profit across 189 formation-holding windows for all the three strategies. However, there are statistical and economically significant momentum profits, and the profitability increases with the rising of formation-holding periods. Momentum returns are quite sensitive to market conditions but the crash of momentum returns is partly predictable. Return seasonality, risk and herding also provide partial explanation of the momentum profits.

The authors are the first to compare the performances of the pairs trading strategy of Gatev et al. (2006), the conventional momentum of Jegadeesh and Titman (1993), and the 52-week high momentum of George and Hwang (2004) under 189 formation-holding windows. Also, the authors are the first to investigate the association between herding behaviour and momentum returns in the commodity futures market.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the combined performance of momentum and a gross profitability-based strategy. The motivation stems from the strong performance of momentum on the short side and profitability on the long side, suggesting a potentially superior combined strategy. Gross profitability is also a measure of firm quality, so that another motivation is to contribute to a growing literature on factor-based investing that includes momentum and quality as potential factors.

The empirical approach employed in the paper is standard in the asset pricing literature. The firms are sorted into portfolios based on profitability and momentum, and the combined performance is studied through independent double sorting. Both value-weighted and equally weighted returns are reported in case of key empirical results.

The combined strategy results in superior performance. Specifically, the strategy produces results 2.75 greater than the momentum strategy, and about four times as high as the profitability strategy. The strategy also has much higher Sharpe ratio that improves further when combined with size and value strategies.

The research has significant implications for academics and practitioners alike. A new investment strategy that has not been explored in the literature is presented. The superior performance of the strategy presents a challenge for the market efficiency, and would be of interest to academics and practitioners working in the area of investment management.

There has been a growing interest in multi-factor investing in recent years. The paper documents that superior performance is achieved by combining two of the popular factors, namely profitability and momentum.

The research is the first to study the combined performance of profitability and momentum, and provide evidence on the superiority of the combined strategy.