Lead-lag relationships in international stock markets revisited: Are they exploitable?

Abstract

This paper re-examines empirical lead-lag relationships in stock portfolios sorted by size, analyst coverage and institutional ownership across seven major developed markets. We find that lead-lag relationships continue to exist in a majority of countries. A simple trading strategy that exploits the return predictability based on lead-lag relationships yields significant abnormal returns in several markets. However, the abnormal returns quickly decline when transaction costs are introduced and become insignificant for one-way transaction costs of more than 40 basis points. Thus, lead-lag relationships are probably not exploitable in practice and will continue to exist in the future.