This paper proposes a risk-based explanation of the momentum anomaly on equity markets. Regressing the momentum … the USA from 1963 to 2012 reduces the momentum effect from a highly statistically significant 11.94% to an insignificant 1 ….84%. We find additional supportive out-of sample evidence for our risk-based momentum explanation in a sample of 23 …

We report strong evidence that changes of momentum, i.e. "acceleration", defined as the first difference of successive … returns, provide better performance and higher explanatory power than momentum. The corresponding Γ-factor explains the … momentum-sorted portfolios entirely but not the reverse. Thus, momentum can be considered an imperfect proxy for acceleration …