What Is Mean Reversion, and How Do Investors Use It?

Thus, apart from identifying the oversold and overbought levels, any mean reversion strategy you use must have a way of showing the estimated price average level. Mean reversion trading is a method of trading where you try to capture correctional price moves after the price has moved significantly away from its mean. The mean reversion strategy aims to take advantage of extreme price changes in an asset. If a stock’s price is too high, investors may sell it to secure profits before it returns to its original value. On the other hand, if the price is too low, investors may buy the asset, anticipating its rise back to the original value.

  1. It considers how far away from the mean the price of an asset deviates before it converges back to the average.
  2. There are many methods traders use to identify oversold and overbought market situations; a good example is an oscillator like the RSI.
  3. The profit potential if the assets move back toward each other should be more than enough to offset transaction costs, otherwise the trade may be ignored.

But this time, I marked all the pullbacks that did not make it all the way to the moving average. And, of course, if we’d look closer, there would be many more times when price attempted a reversion, but it failed. Below the lower band is considered oversold, while above the upper band is considered overbought. Look for a buying opportunity when the price goes below the lower band and aim to close your position once the price crosses the middle band.

If one asset moves 1% per day and the other asset moves 2% per day, the position in the 2% asset should be half of the 1% asset. This is because if an asset moves more, we don’t need as much of that position to make a profit when compared to an asset that is moving less. Mean reversion strategies attempt to capture profits as the price of an asset returns to more normal levels, or the average. When considering using a mean reversion strategy in your trading, remember that a price rising away from the mean doesn’t necessarily indicate that the price will fall. That would also constitute reversion to the mean because the price is back in line with its average. While reversion to the mean occurs regularly, prices rarely stay exactly at the mean for long.

Traders use these approaches when performing a statistical analysis of market conditions – they are usually viewed as one component of an overarching strategy. Some considerations involved in mean reversion involve time horizon and market conditions. The effectiveness of a mean reversion strategy can vary based on the time horizon. Short-term traders may use intraday data, while long-term investors may use yearly data.

Price-action-based mean-reversion: the double seven strategy

Interestingly, mean reversion is one of the most reliable technical analysis methods used by swing traders. With numerous companies available, choosing the right ones can be challenging. This is where choosing proper trading strategies comes into place, and Mean Reversion is considered by many investors a great strategy when making a trading decision. One strategy that traders may consider for forex trading is looking at how far the price tends to deviate from the mean before reverting back to the mean. It can be also applied to volatility​​, earnings, earnings growth rates and technical indicator​ levels. Read on to discover how to calculate the mean reversion formula and how to apply mean reversion strategies when trading within the financial markets.

Mean Reversion Trading Strategy with a Sneaky Secret

The idea behind mean reversion trading is to identify stock markets in an uptrend, buy the pullback, and sell the rally. Now, this trading strategy can be applied to other markets but for this post, I’ll focus only on the stock market. Mean reversion trading is a strategy that buys when an asset price is low, and then sell it on the next “bounce” higher. Usually, the mean reversion trading strategy has a low DD, but that can be reduced even further.

Mean Reversion VS Trend Following

Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling. However, they must use unique means of differentiating a solid demand from a weak one. This trading technique assumes that a bullish market isn’t just a market waiting to be corrected oanda review (i.e., return to its mean value). The random walk also denounces fundamental analysis as predictive of stock market movements. This is because the information collected can sometimes be unreliable due to poor quality or misinterpretation by the analyst. So, if the RSI doesn’t cross above 40 after 10 trading days, we’ll exit the trade on the open of the 11th trading day.

This means that if a stock’s price deviates significantly from its usual value, it is expected to revert to that value in the future. Day traders can use experience to figure what might be deemed as a ‘large’ movement purely through watching markets over time. For this strategy, you use a 2-day RSI, in combination with a 200-day moving average. If you are looking roboforex scam or legit for a buying opportunity, the price has to be above the 200-day moving average to show that the market is in an uptrend. Up to that point, the demand-supply balance has been in the favor of demand, but that is now changing, as more people are willing to sell to take profits. As one should expect, when there is more supply than demand, the price begins to decline.

When a stock’s price is rising, it attracts many investors and traders who rush to buy the stock in order not to miss out on the opportunity — fear of missing out (greed). As a result, there will xm forex review be a higher demand for the stock than supply, making the price rise more and more. Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.

Consider a mean reversion situation involving the stock of Company XYZ.

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