This post is an update to Part I of applying PCA to NASDAQOMX India TR indices.
Daily returns tends to be noisy. One way to smooth things out is to use rolling returns over a certain period of days. Rolling returns also allows a bit of slack in terms of variable response times. We wanted to check if using rolling returns would help shake out any obvious regime shifts that daily returns could not.
To recap, we split the NASDAQOMX India TR Index (NQINT) into two regimes. One above SMA-200 (A SMA_200) and the other below (B SMA_200.) The idea was to use PCA on the component indices to see if we could develop a “good times” and “bad times” portfolio based on the regime we are in.
NQINT 200-day SMA chart:
Factor loadings of indices when NQINT is above its 200-day SMA:
Factor loadings of indices when NQINT is below its 200-day SMA:
And finally, factor loadings through out:
Unfortunately, neither using daily returns nor lagged rolling returns resulted in PCA being useful in chalking out a regime specific portfolio.
Code and more charts are on github.