Different Types of Systematic Trading Strategies
There are many different types of systematic trading strategies that traders and investors can use to try and beat the market. Some more popular ones are trend following, momentum, mean reversion, sentiment trading, contrarian trading, factor investing, and value investing. In this blog post, we will briefly go over each of these different strategies so that you can get a better understanding of them.
Trend Following
Trend following is a systematic trading strategy that involves buying assets that are trending up and selling assets that are trending down. The goal of trend following is to ride the waves of an asset’s price movement and make profits along the way.
One of the main advantages of trend following is that it provides a discipline that most traders can follow with easy rules regarding when to enter and exit from positions. While trend following can be done on any time frame, usually shorter time frames make trends noisy. These are more effective in mid-term and long-term trading, like position trading. Usually, these have lower win rates, but the profit from the wins can be outsized and cover for the losses and more.
Momentum Trading
Momentum is another systematic trading strategy that focuses on buying assets that have a sudden acceleration of price rise and selling assets that have a sudden acceleration of price fall. Also, volume plays an important factor here. The goal of momentum trading is to take advantage of an asset’s price momentum and make profits quickly in a short period of time while the asset’s price is moving in your favor.
The advantage of momentum trading is that it can generate quick profits and also help keep losses small. These are great for swing traders. But these require precise execution timing to be profitable.
Mean Reversion Trading
Mean reversion is a systematic trading strategy that involves buying assets where the price have got extended below a mean value and selling assets that are extended above a mean value. The goal of mean reversion is to take advantage of market corrections and make profits as prices revert to their mean or average level.
One of the main advantages of mean reversion is that it can help deliver a higher win rate with low-risk entry points. But the potential gain from these strategies is also low. Typically these are also short-time frame trading strategies and work well for day traders and swing traders.
Sentiment Trading
Sentiment trading is a systematic trading strategy that involves taking positions based on investor sentiment. The goal of sentiment trading is to take advantage of market moves before they happen by analyzing how investors feel about an asset.
One of the main advantages of sentiment trading is that it can help you anticipate market moves before they happen. By analyzing how investors feel about an asset, you can potentially get ahead of the crowd and make profits while everyone else is still waiting for prices to move in your favor. But the risk is that often market sentiments change frequently and also may not translate immediately to price changes. Sentiment trading can work across different styles, from day trading and swing trading to position trading, depending on the sentiment data used.
Contrarian Trading
Contrarian trading is a strategy that bets against the current market trend. For example, if the majority of investors are bullish on a particular stock, a contrarian trader would be bearish and look to sell the stock short and vice-versa. The thinking behind this strategy is that the market is often wrong in the short-term and that prices will eventually revert back to their true value.
While this strategy can produce outsized gains because typically the market moves against the herd most of the time, but it requires a lot of discipline, a deep understanding of market behaviors, and domain expertise to select the right instruments to trade. Trying to catch "falling knives" can really hurt if one is not careful.
Factor Investing
Factor investing is a strategy that seeks to exploit persistent anomalies in the market by overweighting or underweighting certain factors. The most common factors include value, momentum, size, quality, and volatility. Factor investing has become increasingly popular in recent years as more data has become available to support the efficacy of this approach. This is typically used in long-term investing and requires a deep knowledge of both the technical and fundamental analysis of the market.
Value Investing
Value investing is a strategy that focuses on buying assets that are undervalued by the market. Value investors believe that the market is often inefficient in the short-term and that patient investors will be rewarded in the long-term as prices eventually revert back to their true value, also called intrinsic value. This strategy was popularized by Warren Buffett and is still used by many successful investors today. It is, again, a long-term investing strategy and requires strong fundamental analysis skills to be able to arrive at the intrinsic value of an asset.
There are many different systematic trading strategies available to investors and traders today. Each strategy has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to understand how each one works before deciding which one is right for you.
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