Fundamental momentum on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Abstract

Financial market anomalies are constant subjects of debate because of their devotion form the foundational financial theories. Fama and French (2008) referred to the momentum effect as the premier anomaly. Thus, this study sought to apply the concept of momentum to examine three investment strategies. The first strategy was price momentum, an existing investment strategy but which was used as a comparison to the returns of the second and third strategies. The second strategy applied momentum to return on equity, operating cash flow and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, whilst the third strategy combined stocks with momentum in both stock price and respective fundamental variable.Using a non-probability sampling method, a total of 109 stock listed on the JSE over the period 1999-2010 were tested. Momentum in stock price and respective fundamentals was used to rank stocks into quintiles. The viability of each investment strategy was measured by comparing its average and risk adjusted returns to the market.The results revealed that fundamental momentum can beat market returns, with the highest amount of significant differences found using momentum in return on equity. The combination strategy also reported results of beating the market, with the higest amount of significant differences found using the 12 month fundamental momentum combined with 6 month price momentum.