Nonlinear Mean/Reversion in Stock Prices? A Case of Asian Markets

One of the major assumptions of the contrarian investment strategy is the mean reversion property of the asset prices. Despite of extensive studies, however, empirical evidence of mean reversion in the stock prices still remains elusive. I revisit this issue by applying nonlinear unit root test developed by Park and Shintani (2005, 2010). Using Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) stock price indices for 12 Asian markets, I find that the stock price indices deviations from reference price for Asian markets are not mean-reverting. National stock price deviations may take infinite time to become halfway to the long-run equilibrium values which serves evidence against the usefulness of contrarian strategy.