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Lag-one autocorrelation: signed returns against absolute returns, 2016 to 2025

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-08-14, from Bootstrapping Backtest Confidence Bands.

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Lag-one autocorrelation: signed returns against absolute returns, 2016 to 2025 — 6 rows by 4 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
tickerobs_countreturn_autocorrabs_return_autocorr
SPY2514-0.1330.366
PG2514-0.10.291
MSFT2514-0.1540.269
XOM2514-0.0280.268
KO2514-0.0320.265
JNJ2514-0.080.239
Rows × columns
6 × 4
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for Lag-one autocorrelation: signed returns against absolute returns, 2016 to 2025, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
ticker text 6 distinct values (JNJ, KO, MSFT…)
obs_count number every row is 2,514 count
return_autocorr number -0.154 to -0.028
abs_return_autocorr number 0.239 to 0.366

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.

the exact SQL behind every number
WITH daily AS
(
    SELECT
        ticker,
        date,
        toFloat64(close) / nullIf(lagInFrame(toFloat64(close), 1)
            OVER (PARTITION BY ticker ORDER BY date ROWS BETWEEN 1 PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW), 0) - 1 AS ret
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
    WHERE ticker IN ('SPY', 'MSFT', 'KO', 'XOM', 'JNJ', 'PG')
      AND date >= '2015-11-01'
      AND date <  '2026-01-01'
),
lagged AS
(
    SELECT
        ticker,
        date,
        ret,
        lagInFrame(ret, 1) OVER (PARTITION BY ticker ORDER BY date ROWS BETWEEN 1 PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) AS ret_prev
    FROM daily
    WHERE ret IS NOT NULL
      AND abs(ret) < 0.35
)
SELECT
    ticker,
    count()                                AS obs_count,
    round(corr(ret, ret_prev), 3)          AS return_autocorr,
    round(corr(abs(ret), abs(ret_prev)), 3) AS abs_return_autocorr
FROM lagged
WHERE date >= '2016-01-01'
  AND ret_prev IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY ticker
ORDER BY abs_return_autocorr DESC

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