Author: shyam

High-to-Price (HTP) Momentum Backtest

Momentum investing strategies have historically produced high returns in Indian equities. The biggest problem with them has been deep drawdowns when the markets enter bear territory.

A number of risk management strategies like using moving averages, trailing stop-losses, and hedging have been discussed on this blog before. These strategies, either standalone or in combination with each other, have provided investors with significant protection against momentum crashes. These are “exogenous” techniques, i.e. they are not part of the strategy itself but is imposed by portfolio management infrastructure. The advantage of these techniques is that the default is to be always invested in the market. It is risk-management’s job to control exposure.

Alternatively, endogenous risk-management techniques are those that are baked into the investment strategy itself. Our All Star strategy is a prime example of a momentum strategy that reduces exposure to equities by design. If enough stocks are not hitting their all-time-highs, it simply sits in cash. When you combine this with one of the exogenous risk-management techniques, you end up with a high Sharpe portfolio.

The advantage of high Sharpe strategies is that you can use leverage to amplify returns. However, if you are a “cash-and-carry” investor then it might be too conservative. Is there a momentum strategy that sits between All Star and traditional momentum?

High-to-Price (HTP) Momentum

A new paper, Büsing, Pascal and Mohrschladt, Hannes and Siedhoff, Susanne, Decomposing Momentum: Eliminating its Crash Component (SSRN,) outlines a new way to slice the 52-week momentum strategy to avoid crash risk. It describes a ranking system based on High-to-Price (HTP) where HTP = ln(Phigh/P0) where Phigh is the stock’s 52-week high price and P0 is its price at the beginning of the period.

A monthly rebalanced HTP long-only portfolio looks promising. It sidestepped quite a few whipsaws and has a better drawdown profile than NIFTY 50.

There have been periods where the strategy couldn’t find 25 stocks to go long and it only had a handful of positions or was all cash. However, the degree of overlap between constituents in consequent months is quite high indicating that the portfolio is likely to experience very low churn. In this aspect, it is very similar to the All Stars strategy.

At a line-item level, there have been instances where some stocks have tanked more than 30% in the month. However, the skew is, by-and-large, positive.

Investing in HTP Momentum

The real world doesn’t line-up perfectly to match the end-of-the-month rebalancing activity outlined in our backtest. To make this strategy investible, it needs to have some risk-management strategy in place on a clearly defined universe of stocks and has to be dynamically rebalanced.

We present our High-to-Price (HTP) Momentum Theme that consists of a portfolio of 25 stocks selected from the top 300 stocks by market-cap that rank high on their HTP scores. A 10% trailing stop-loss ensures that errant positions don’t drag down the whole portfolio. It is ideal for investors who can accept a bit more risk than All Stars for potentially higher returns.

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Factor Momentum Performance Update

Factor performance tends to be sticky. If Value, Momentum, Quality, etc. out-performed in the recent past, they continue to out-perform in the near-future.

AQR wrote a paper on it back in January 2019: Factor Momentum Everywhere. More recently, the folks at Research Affiliates extended the research in their Factor Momentum paper. Based on AQR’s research, we setup a portfolio that mimics this for both US and Indian stocks in December 2019. We called it Factor Momentum III and Model Momentum Theme.

The performance of the US portfolio has been gangbusters. It sidestepped the Corona Crash of 2020 and has been on a tear since then. The Indian experience, however, has been disappointing.

US Factor Momentum

The Indian portfolio suffered from its inability to go into cash/bonds during crashes. Being fully invested took a bite out of its overall performance.

India Factor Momentum

The Indian version comes up short even if you compare its stats with its component factor portfolios.

India Factor Momentum Statistics

The intuition behind the Radar Plot above is that the larger the area under the points, better the strategy. Model Momentum is in pink and it pales in comparison to most of its constituents. Surprisingly, the Financial Strength Value Theme (light green,) that is rebalanced annually, beat out everything else.

What explains the underperformance?

  • Not being able to go into cash/bonds meant a larger hill to climb during recoveries. However, cash is a double-edged sword. If you get the timing wrong, you might end up going into cash after the bottom and watch the market recover helplessly. Unless the trend formation period is really short, cash is not a viable option.
  • High transaction costs can also be playing a role here. The difference between Gross and Net returns is ~15%. Not as high as a pure momentum strategy but not trivial either. Also, US portfolios do not incur STT and brokerages are essentially zero.
  • Maybe 20-months is too short a window to judge such a slow-moving strategy. The research looks solid and maybe all we need is to give it some time?
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Getting Started

We are often asked by our readers to help them chart out a path for their investment journey. While we strongly believe that each investor’s risk appetite, hopes and goals are unique, we also understand that there are a lot of choices in front of the investor and sometimes, it could get overwhelming.

Here’s the path of least resistance:

  1. Go through Zerodha Varsity
  2. Understand the need for diversification and that there are not easy answers. No risk, no return.
  3. The best way to get started managing your own portfolio is to just dive into it. Onboard yourself onto our broker and get started on one of our momentum strategies. Great for portfolios between Rs. 15-30 lakhs.
  4. As a broker, we do not charge any additional fees for access to our strategies (over 50+, at last count.) And, you don’t have to worry about execution – we’ll take care of that.
  5. For larger accounts, where portfolio sizes are more than Rs. 25 lakhs, we offer customized solutions that typically involve risk-barbells. Get in touch with us!

We will keep this page updated as we go along – check back often!

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Ranking and Visualizing Model Performance Metrics

On StockViz, we have over 50 quantitative models that are available for investing. They all have different risk and return profiles. It is fairly simple to pull up, say, the Sharpe Ratio of a particular model by navigating to its home page. However, it doesn’t say how it compares to all the other models we have going.

Let’s say you are looking to invest in one of our “Rapid-fire” Momo strategies. Our oldest ones are Relative, Velocity and Acceleration. Their (gross) performance metrics are displayed in a table.

Relative
Velocity
Acceleration

If you add net performance metrics into the mix, you’ll end up with a combinatorial explosion. How do you pick the “best” one of them to invest in?

Enter Radar Charts.

These charts show you the relative rank of each of these models against all the other 50+ models we have going. Intuitively, larger the area under the yellow (net) lines, better the model.

The only caveat with these Radars is that you should compare them against models of similar vintage. For example, we went live with our All Star momentum model in May 2020. Since then, the market regime has been extremely favorable to momentum strategies. It should come as no surprise that its Radar looks like the Queen’s Crown.

With that caveat out of the way, Radars are a great way to visualize how models square up against each other.

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Gross vs. Net Returns

The Government always has first dibs

First time investors often get bedazzled by tall claims of “20%” returns in direct equities. All they need to do is subscribe to an “exclusive” telegram channel or advisory service and mint their way to millions. Even if these claims were true, gross returns – the number often marketed – has little to do with the net returns that the investor finally realizes at the end of the year.

Very few know that a high-churn portfolio that delivers 20% gross returns is equivalent to a mutual fund that delivers 14% net. So, who ate your cheese?

Layers of Transaction Taxes

Securities Transaction Tax (STT)

The STT is an automatic tax collected by the government on all transactions irrespective of whether you made money on it or not. On equities, it is currently set at 0.1% – if you bought & sold 1 stock worth Rs. 100, then the government collects 20p on it. This is one of the biggest drags on high-churn strategies.

Last year, the government collected ₹16,927 crore in STT.1

Exchange Transaction Charges

The trading venue, typically the NSE (National Stock Exchange) or the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange,) levies a transaction charge for allowing you to trade through them. This varies by exchange and they are know to give rebates to high volume brokers to keep them loyal. The last time I checked, it was around 0.00345% on the NSE.2

Stamp Duty

When the Central Government is skimming off through STT, why should State Governments be far behind? The states too have their hands in the till through “stamp duty.”

Stamp duty is a state levy paid to register a document, typically an agreement or transaction paper between two or more parties, with the registrar. In an era where all transactions are electronic and registering transactions is just flipping some bits in a database, this is basically free money to the states.

Before 2020, every state had its own rate but thankfully, the Modi Government rationalized it to a common rate of 0.015% on the buy-side of equities.3

SEBI Turnover fees

If you though that SEBI was an arm of the government and should be entirely funded by the general budget, the joke is on you. If you have a look at your contract note that the brokers sends you on the days that you trade, you’ll find a “SEBI Turnover Fee.” This is 0.00015% on both buys & sells. While its one of the smaller taxes/fees on transactions, it is still a percentage of total volume, so it adds up over time.4

During 2019-20, the total amount of fees and other charges collected by SEBI was Rs. 608.26 crore.5

Short-term and Long-term Capital Gains Tax

The rationale behind STT, introduced in 2014, was to replace the long-term capital gains tax. It was said that there was a lot of “leakage” in collecting LTCG and that a tax on transactions collected directly by the exchanges would plug it. However, the 2018 budget saw the re-imposition of LTCG.6

However, if your strategy demands churn, then you need to be worried more about STCG (15% on profits) than on LTCG (10% on profits.)

A High Bar of Direct-Equity

After all these taxes, levies and charges, when the numbers are tallied up at the end of the year, most direct-equity investors would be better off with a mutual fund.

The napkin math (sheet) above doesn’t consider brokerage – since those are mostly zero – and DMAT charges – those charged by CDSL – since those are flat fees charged only on sales.

Direct-equity investing strategies need to walk a fine line between optimizing for lower transaction costs, risk management and taxes. This is where we find advisory disclosures lacking. Most advisors do not disclose portfolio churn rates and nor do they indicate what the net, after-tax, returns would look like.

Also, a mutual fund’s NAV includes all of these charges and your portfolio compounds tax-free until you redeem. So, if you have a 5+ year time horizon, then compounding the 15% STCG adds significant tailwinds to your portfolio.

Conclusion

While comparing different strategies, investors should also consider portfolio churn and try and back into what the net, after-tax, returns would look like at the end of the year. Know that mutual fund NAVs are net of transaction costs and can compound tax-free.

Direct-equity strategies should clear a high-bar.

Looking for a sensible way to invest? Here’s how to get started.

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