Pairs trading is a type of arbitrage investment strategy that buys an underpriced security and simultaneously sells an overpriced security. Since the 1980s, investors have recognized pairs trading as a promising arbitrage strategy that pursues absolute returns rather than relative profits. Thus, individual and institutional traders, as well as hedge fund traders in the financial markets, have an interest in developing a pairs trading strategy. This study proposes pairs trading rules (PTRs) created from a price ratio between securities (i.e., stock index futures) using rough set analysis. The price ratio involves calculating the closing price of one security and dividing it by the closing price of another security and generating Buy or Sell signals according to whether the ratio is increasing or decreasing. In this empirical study, we generate PTRs through rough set analysis applied to various technical indicators derived from the price ratio between KOSPI 200 and S&P 500 index futures. The proposed trading rules for pairs trading indicate high profits in the futures market.

The core decisions of bulk shipping businesses can be summarized as the timing and the choice of period for which carrying capacity is traded. In particular, frequent decisions to trade freight either with repeated spot transactions or with a one-off long-term deal critically impact business performance. Even though a variety of freight trading strategies can be employed to facilitate the decisions, chartering practitioners have not been active in utilizing these strategies, and academic research has rarely proposed applicable solutions. The specific properties of freight as a tradable commodity are not properly reflected in existing studies, and limitations have been reported in their application to the real world. This research focused on the establishment of applicable freight trading strategies by taking into account two properties of freight: time perishability and term-dependant pricing. In addition to traditional trading strategies, artificial neural networks were applied for the first time to the test of freight trading strategies. The performances of the trading strategies were measured and compared to produce a remarkable outperformance of the ANN. This research is expected to make a significant contribution to chartering practices by enhancing the quality of chartering decisions and eventually enabling the effective management of freight rate risk. In addition to methodological expansion, the result will propose a way to approach the controversial issue of freight market efficiency.