January effect or called turn-of-the-year effect is a good example of seasonal abnormal in security markets around the world. During turn-of-the-year, certain types of securities produce positive abnormal returns. Stock prices tend to rise during the starting of the last trading day in December and ending on the fifth trading day of January. Rozeff and Kinney (1976) found a seasonal pattern in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) index over the period of 1904 to 1974. The average monthly return in January was about 3.5 percent, while the average return in other months was just 0.5 percent. The average return in January appeared to be seven times higher than returns for other months.
Keim (1983) found that the abnormal return is related to the stock market capitalization. As such, small capitalization stocks outperform large capitalization stocks in January, as small capitalization stocks post a higher abnormal return than large capitalization stocks. Reiganum (1983) confirmed that the January effect is a small capitalization phenomenon.
The Weekend Effect
Doyle and Chen (2009) suggested a weekday effect that the day-of-the-week changes over time. As pointed out by Cross (1973), the weekend effect involves negative returns to stocks between Friday and Monday's close has been analyzed in the literature. Several studies have investigated the reversal of the weekend effect. Brusa, Liu, and Schulman (2000) discovered that Monday returns for U.S. stocks were positive and the largest during 1990s.
Brusa, Liu, and Schulman (2003) showed that weekend and reverse weekend effects exist in a wide range of industries and that the effects are similar across months. Brusa and Liu (2004) found that the positive Monday returns are concentrated in the first and third weeks of each month, while Brusa, Lui, and Schulman (2005) showed that the reverse weekend effect is correlated with the previous Friday return. Thus, positive Monday returns for large stocks are likely to be observed after positive Friday returns.
Seasonal anomalies
These seasonal abnormal include holiday effect, day-of-the-week effect, and month-end effect. Most of the interests are seasonality began in 1966 when a market technician, Arthur Merrill, identified an obvious trend of stock prices on certain days of the week, at certain times of the month, and around holiday seasons. Merrill’s (1966) work on literature aimed at both identification and explanation of these seasonal irregularities in asset returns. Several studies have studied the securities prices having abnormal returns over the weekend, that is, the day-of-the-week effect. French (1980) shows that US common stocks held over the weekend earn a small negative return.
Gibbons and Hess (1981), and Keim and Stambaugh (1984) also provide empirical evidence that supports this weekly stock return. Ariel (1987) examines US. stock indices returns from 1961 to 1981 and finds stocks appear to earn positive average returns only around the beginning and during the first half of calendar months, and zero average returns during the second half.
Holiday effect
According to the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) by Fama (1970), stock prices follow randomly and past information cannot be used to predict the future. Therefore, there should be no abnormal returns on special occasions such as holidays. Lakonishok and Smidt (1988) significant return before US public holidays. These pre-holiday returns are two to five times higher than returns before a weekend and 23 times higher than those on normal days. These results are confirmed by several other studies, such as Pettengill (1989) and Ariel (1990). These studies all focus on developed financial markets.
A number of studies have also examined the post holiday effect. Lakonishok and Smidt (1988) find insignificant post-holiday returns until 1952 and significant positive returns afterwards. However, Kim and Park (1994) document negative post holiday returns for the UK, and Lee et al. (1990) for Korea and Singapore. The magnitude and statistical significance of pre holiday returns may vary on specific holidays. Returns prior to religious holidays tend to be higher than returns of other holidays. Chan et al. (1996) show significant pre-holiday effects before cultural holidays in Asia. Specifically, Malaysia sees abnormal returns before Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year effect
Gao and Kling (2005) also found a pattern of market return in both Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges with the highest return in February, but it is insignificant as well. The explanation for the seasonal high return in February in China is that February is the turn-of-the-year in China, as the Chinese Lunar New Year usually begins in late January or sometime during February, rather than the calendar year. However, Zhang and Sun (2003) by examining the seasonal anomalies in China, reported that there is no January effect or a February Chinese New Year effect on the Chinese stock market. But a significant and positive March effect was found. The explanation is interesting that they consider that the March effect in China reveals the political nature of financial anomalies in the country. March is the political high season in China and in March political window-dressing is caused by political maneuvers.
