Fundamentally, Momentum is Fundamental Momentum

Robert Novy-Marx

NBER Working Paper No. 20984
Issued in February 2015
NBER Program(s):   AP

Momentum in firm fundamentals, i.e., earnings momentum, explains the performance of strategies based on price momentum. Earnings surprise measures subsume past performance in cross sectional regressions of returns on firm characteristics, and the time-series performance of price momentum strategies is fully explained by their covariances with earnings momentum strategies. Controlling for earnings surprises when constructing price momentum strategies significantly reduces their performance, without reducing their high volatilities. Controlling for past performance when constructing earnings momentum strategies reduces their volatilities, and eliminates the crashes strongly associated with momentum of all types, without reducing the strategies' high average returns. While past performance does not have independent power predicting the cross section of expected returns, it does predicts stock comovements, and is thus important for explain cross sectional variation in realized returns

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Robert Novy-Marx

Simon Graduate School of Business
University of Rochester
305 Schlegel Hall
Rochester, NY 14627

http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/