NORTH AMERICAN, EUROPEAN AND BRAZILIAN FUTURE COFFEE MARKETS: EFFICACY OF CANDLESTICKS IN SIGNALING PRICES

Abstract

This study aimed at verifying the efficacy of bullish and bearish patterns of candlesticks in inflection and in the stability of the coffee price inflection in future North American, European and Brazilian markets.  The occurrence of candlesticks patterns was estimated based on the coffee daily opening, closing, maximum, and minimum series of prices in the derivatives markets from the New York Board of Trade, Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão and the International Exchange Futures Europe, which were obtained from the financial platform investing.com.  We verified the occurrence of sixteen bullish and bearish candlesticks patterns and then the indicators of efficacy were classified into three levels (below acceptable, satisfactory and high).   The results pointed out that six patterns are effective in the inflection of prices (reversion of the price one day after the occurrence of the pattern) in both markets and the other six patterns were effective in the inflection in just one of the evaluated markets.  The results also showed that most of the candlesticks patterns that we studied were effective in the inflection of prices in the future European and Brazilian coffee markets and nearly a third of these patterns were effective in the North American market.  However, the candlesticks patterns are ineffective in maintaining the inflection of prices in the three markets.  Thus, we suggest that these patterns be used only for decisions with time horizon of one day after its occurrence and it is not advised to maintain post-inflection position because, in practice, they don’t ensure profitability.