Study on Singular Spectrum Analysis as a New Technical Oscillator for Trading Rules Design

Abstract

The connection between Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) decomposition and short-term market movements is investigated. Since SSA is a non-parametric approach, suitable to decompose general time-series into meaningful components, such as trends, oscillations and noise, it is proposed as a new oscillator-type Technical Indicator, replacing popular ones. New Technical Trading Rules (TTRs) are designed and applied to some major global stock indexes to illustrate the benefits in terms of revealing market movements. The performance is evaluated according to different risk-adjustment metrics and the empirical results reveal that the SSA-TTRs may outperform some popular technical oscillators and also the Buy & Hold strategy.