Technical trading rules in the cryptocurrency market

Abstract

This paper studies simple moving average trading strategies employing daily price data on the eleven most-traded cryptocurrencies in the 2016–2018 period. Our results indicate a variable moving average strategy is successful when using the 20 days moving average trading strategy. Specifically, excluding Bitcoin the technical trading rule generates an excess return of 8.76% p.a. after controlling for the average market return. Our results suggest that cryptocurrency markets are inefficient.