The Role of Japanese Candlestick in DVAR Model

The decomposition-based vector autoregressive model （DVAR） provides a new framework for scrutinizing the efficiency of technical analysis in forecasting stock returns. However, its relation- ships with other technical indicators still remain unknown. This paper investigates the relationships of DVAR model with the Japanese Candlestick indicators using simulations, theoretical explanations and empirical studies. The main finding of this paper is that both lower and upper shadows in Japanese Candlestick Granger contribute to the DVAR model explanation power, and thus, providing useful information for improving the DVAR forecasts. This finding makes sense as it means that the infor- mation contained in the lower and upper shadows should be used when modeling the stock returns with DVAR. Empirical studies performed on China SSEC stock index demonstrate that DVAR model with upper and lower shadows as exogenous variables does have informative and valuable out-of-sample forecasts.