IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v124y2014i3p335-337.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why don’t you trade only four days a year? An empirical study into the abnormal returns of quarters first trading day

Author

Listed:
  • Cohen, Gil

Abstract

In this research I examined a calendar anomaly that occurs at the beginning of each quarter. Through an examination of 34 years of daily and annual returns for the S&P500 and 13 years of returns for popular ETFs, I have demonstrated the existence of the First Day of Quarter (FDQ) effect. By trading only four days a year from the beginning of 2000 until the end of 2013, an investor could have gained 113.1% of the S&P500 returns for that period, while being exposed to stock risk for only 56 days. Moreover, for 11 of those 14 years of trading, the FDQ was responsible for more than 10% of the annual returns. Only for two years since 2000 (2001, 2005) has the FDQ yielded a negative return. The biggest beneficiary of the FDQ is the financial sector, which for the last 13 years of investing has been non-fertile, showing −6.12% total return. Investing only at the beginning of each quarter for a total of 52 days would have yielded a return of 40.17%. The next beneficiary of the FDQ is the technological sector. The 82.5% of total return gained in this sector over the last 13 years could have been gained in only 52 days of trading.

Suggested Citation

  • Cohen, Gil, 2014. "Why don’t you trade only four days a year? An empirical study into the abnormal returns of quarters first trading day," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 335-337.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:124:y:2014:i:3:p:335-337
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2014.06.018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176514002298
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2014.06.018?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cho, Young-Hyun & Linton, Oliver & Whang, Yoon-Jae, 2007. "Are there Monday effects in stock returns: A stochastic dominance approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 736-755, December.
    2. Syed Basher & Perry Sadorsky, 2006. "Day-of-the-week effects in emerging stock markets," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(10), pages 621-628.
    3. Schwert, G. William, 2003. "Anomalies and market efficiency," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 939-974, Elsevier.
    4. Hong, Harrison & Yu, Jialin, 2009. "Gone fishin': Seasonality in trading activity and asset prices," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 672-702, November.
    5. Sven Bouman & Ben Jacobsen, 2002. "The Halloween Indicator, "Sell in May and Go Away": Another Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1618-1635, December.
    6. Laura T. Starks & Li Yong & Lu Zheng, 2006. "Tax‐Loss Selling and the January Effect: Evidence from Municipal Bond Closed‐End Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 3049-3067, December.
    7. Shiok Ye Lim & Chong Mun Ho & Brian Dollery, 2010. "An empirical analysis of calendar anomalies in the Malaysian stock market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 255-264.
    8. Jacobsen, Ben & Marquering, Wessel, 2008. "Is it the weather?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 526-540, April.
    9. Ariel, Robert A, 1990. "High Stock Returns before Holidays: Existence and Evidence on Possible Causes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1611-1626, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Levy, Tamir & Yagil, Joseph, 2012. "The week-of-the-year effect: Evidence from around the globe," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1963-1974.
    2. Wagner, Moritz & Lee, John Byong-Tek & Margaritis, Dimitris, 2022. "Mutual fund flows and seasonalities in stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    3. Jie Hou & Wendong Shi & Jingwei Sun, 2019. "Stock Returns, weather, and air conditioning," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-10, July.
    4. Degenhardt, Thomas & Auer, Benjamin R., 2018. "The “Sell in May” effect: A review and new empirical evidence," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 169-205.
    5. Zhang, Cherry Y. & Jacobsen, Ben, 2021. "The Halloween indicator, “Sell in May and Go Away”: Everywhere and all the time," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    6. Abudy, Menachem (Meni) & Mugerman, Yevgeny & Shust, Efrat, 2022. "The Winner Takes It All: Investor Sentiment and the Eurovision Song Contest," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Alex Plastun, 2016. "Calendar Anomalies in the Ukrainian Stock Market," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1573, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Plastun, Alex & Sibande, Xolani & Gupta, Rangan & Wohar, Mark E., 2020. "Halloween Effect in developed stock markets: A historical perspective," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 130-138.
    9. Ramona DUMITRIU & Razvan STEFANESCU, 2017. "The Behavior of Stock Prices during Lent and Advent," Risk in Contemporary Economy, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, pages 95-112.
    10. Baur, Dirk G., 2013. "The autumn effect of gold," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-11.
    11. Zaremba, Adam & Schabek, Tomasz, 2017. "Seasonality in government bond returns and factor premia," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 292-302.
    12. Terence Tai-Leung Chong & Siqi Hou, 2021. "Will stock rise on Valentine’s Day?," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(5), pages 646-667, May.
    13. Sun, Qian & Tong, Wilson H.S., 2010. "Risk and the January effect," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 965-974, May.
    14. Kaustia, Markku & Rantapuska, Elias, 2013. "Does mood affect trading behavior?," SAFE Working Paper Series 4, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    15. Ramona DUMITRIU & Razvan STEFANESCU, 2017. "The Behavior of Stock Prices during Lent and Advent," Proceedings RCE 2017, Editura Lumen, vol. 0, pages 95-112, November.
    16. Kenourgios, Dimitris & Samios, Yiannis, 2021. "Halloween effect and active fund management," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 534-544.
    17. Suliman Zakaria Suliman Abdalla, 2015. "An Investigation of the Month-of-The-Year Effect for the Sudanese Stock Market," Working Papers 924, Economic Research Forum, revised Jun 2015.
    18. Stefanescu, Răzvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "The impact of the Great Lent and of the Nativity Fast on the Bucharest Stock Exchange," MPRA Paper 89023, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Dec 2016.
    19. Qadan, Mahmoud & Kliger, Doron, 2016. "The short trading day anomaly," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 62-80.
    20. Chui, David & Wing Cheng, Wui & Chi Chow, Sheung & LI, Ya, 2020. "Eastern Halloween effect: A stochastic dominance approach," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Calendar anomalies; Abnormal return; ETFs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:124:y:2014:i:3:p:335-337. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.