Trading Rules on a Small Stock Market

In this article, the results of an extensive study of the weak form efficiency of the Iceland stock market are presented. This study almost covers the market’s entire history, with the research starting at the beginning of 1993 and ending in July 2017. Four trading rules based on 70-day moving averages were constructed and compared with the passive investment strategy of buying the market index. All of these trading rules provided significantly better returns than the passive strategy, even when considering trading costs. This result indicates that the Icelandic stock market did not show weak form efficiency, and past returns predicted future returns during the period examined.

JEL classification: G12, G14, G17.