Investigation of the Calendar Effect

Abstract

This chapter aims to examine calendar anomaly in selected sample countries by using second-order stochastic dominance (SSD) approach. Day-of-the-week and month-of-the-year effects are analysed for a group of 5 developed and 5 developing country indexes to estimate efficient (inefficient) weekdays and months for the period between 1988 and 2016. Then, back-testing procedure is applied for each sample country to compare performance of index returns for 2017-2019 with the strategy arisen by estimation results. Findings suggest that Monday and Friday returns are inefficient and efficient respectively in all developing countries where different results obtained for developed ones. In monthly analysis, December returns found efficient in 8 indexes including S&P 500. However, October is inefficient for all indexes. Positive January effect seems disappeared in most cases. Back-testing results indicate that in a bearish market condition SSD strategy outperforms index returns in general for daily and monthly comparison.