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ItemEssays on momentum investing( 2013)Chapter 1: This paper reexamines the apparent success of two prominent stock trading strategies: long-term contrarian and intermediate-term momentum. The paper demonstrates that long-term contrarian is entirely attributable to the classic January size effect, rather than to investor overreaction, as argued by De Bondt and Thaler (1985). Further, the paper also resolves the Novy-Marx (2012) concern about whether return autocorrelation “is really momentum” by demonstrating that the superior performance of intermediate-term momentum is due to strong January seasonality in the cross-section of returns. The implications are that long-term contrarian must be considered largely illusory, and intermediate-term momentum must take account of annual seasonalities in returns. Chapter 2: Macroeconomic risk continues to be proposed as a source of stock price momentum. For instance, Liu and Zhang (2008) claim that the growth rate of industrial production “plays an important role in driving momentum profits”. This paper shows that the growth rate of industrial production is not the source of momentum profits. Because recent winners and recent losers have nearly identical loadings on the growth rate of industrial production outside of January, there is essentially a net zero factor loading in the 11 months of a year when momentum does exist, and a difference only in January, when losers massively outperform winners. We also document the fact that the growth rate of industrial production is not a priced risk factor outside of January. Moreover, application of the same methodology to all factors reveals no evidence that an explanation for momentum profits lies in macroeconomic risk.