Trend following algorithms in automated derivatives market trading

Trend following (TF) is trading philosophy by which buying/selling decisions are made solely according to the observed market trend. For many years, many manifestations of TF such as a software program called Turtle Trader, for example, emerged in the industry. Surprisingly little has been studied in academic research about its algorithms and applications. Unlike financial forecasting, TF does not predict any market movement; instead it identifies a trend at early time of the day, and trades automatically afterwards by a pre-defined strategy regardless of the moving market directions during run time. Trend following trading has been popular among speculators. However it remains as a trading method where human judgment is applied in setting the rules (aka the strategy) manually. Subsequently the TF strategy is executed in pure objective operational manner. Finding the correct strategy at the beginning is crucial in TF. This usually involves human intervention in first identifying a trend, and configuring when to place an order and close it out, when certain conditions are met. In this paper, we evaluated and compared a collection of TF algorithms that can be programmed in a computer system for automated trading. In particular, a new version of TF called trend recalling model is presented. It works by partially matching the current market trend with one of the proven successful patterns from the past. Our experiments based on real stock market data show that this method has an edge over the other trend following methods in profitability. The results show that TF however is still limited by market fluctuation (volatility), and the ability to identify trend signal. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.