• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.189-220
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• 2009

This study tests the significance of momentum and contrarian strategy which challenge the weak efficient market hypothesis (EMH). If momentum and contrarian strategy can make extra return above the market, this can be a significant critics to the weak EMH. By using Monte Carlo simulation we have found that many existing returature, which test the significance of momentum and contrarian strategy, have a significance distortion problem. We test the significance of momentum and contrarian strategy by using reality check test of White(2000) which solve the problem of data snooping bias. The results are following. When we use the KOSPI index as the benchmark portfolio, we can get the best strategy of momentum strategy in the case of mean return. But in the case of Sharp ratio which is the performance measure adjusting risk, we find that the best strategy in the momentum and contrarian strategy can not dominate the performance of benchmark portfolio. Therefore we argue that weak EMH can not be rejected because of superior performance of momentum and contrarian strategy when we consider risk.