IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apfiec/v17y2007i13p1027-1035.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tax-loss selling and seasonal effects in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Qiwei Chen
  • Lisa Jack
  • Andrew Wood

Abstract

We examine monthly seasonal returns for the UK during the period 1955 to 2003. We identify four distinct tax regimes during which both the incentive and ability to tax-loss sell varies. In support of the tax-loss selling hypothesis, we find that the relationship between past losses and both January and April returns is strongest during tax regimes in which the incentives to off-set tax is high and weakest during regimes in which the incentive is low. Most intriguingly, our evidence suggests that tax reforms introduced in 1998 that had the aim of reducing short-term trading have been successful in limiting tax-loss selling by the company sector but not for the personal sector. Finally, neither the January nor April effect appears to be driven by the size effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Qiwei Chen & Lisa Jack & Andrew Wood, 2007. "Tax-loss selling and seasonal effects in the UK," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(13), pages 1027-1035.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apfiec:v:17:y:2007:i:13:p:1027-1035
    DOI: 10.1080/09603100600794317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09603100600794317
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09603100600794317?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. Stilianos Fountas & Konstantinos N. Segredakis, 1999. "Emerging Stock Markets Return Seasonalities: the January Effect and the Tax-Loss Selling Hypothesis," Working Papers 37, National University of Ireland Galway, Department of Economics, revised 1999.
    2. Dyl, Edward A, 1977. "Capital Gains Taxation and Year-End Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(1), pages 165-175, March.
    3. Mustafa Gultekin & Bulent Gultekin, "undated". "Stock Market Seasonality: Internal Evidence," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 17-83, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    4. Zainudin Arsad & J. Andrew Coutts, 1997. "Security price anomalies in the London International Stock Exchange: a 60 year perspective," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(5), pages 455-464.
    5. Keim, Donald B., 1983. "Size-related anomalies and stock return seasonality : Further empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 13-32, June.
    6. Claessens, Stijn & Dasgupta, Susmita & Glen, Jack, 1995. "Return Behavior in Emerging Stock Markets," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 9(1), pages 131-151, January.
    7. Rozeff, Michael S. & Kinney, William Jr., 1976. "Capital market seasonality: The case of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 379-402, October.
    8. Branch, Ben, 1977. "A Tax Loss Trading Rule," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(2), pages 198-207, April.
    9. Schultz, Paul, 1985. "Personal Income Taxes and the January Effect: Small Firm Stock Returns before the War Revenue Act of 1917: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 333-343, March.
    10. James M. Poterba & Scott J. Weisbenner, 2001. "Capital Gains Tax Rules, Tax‐loss Trading, and Turn‐of‐the‐year Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 353-368, February.
    11. Clare, Andrew D & Psaradakis, Zacharias & Thomas, Stephen H, 1995. "An Analysis of Seasonality in the U.K. Equity Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(429), pages 398-409, March.
    12. Gultekin, Mustafa N. & Gultekin, N. Bulent, 1983. "Stock market seasonality : International Evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 469-481, December.
    13. Reinganum, Marc R & Shapiro, Alan C, 1987. "Taxes and Stock Return Seasonality: Evidence from the London Stock Exchange," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(2), pages 281-295, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristina Ortiz & Gloria Ramirez & Luis Vicente, 2010. "Quarterly return patterns in the Spanish stock market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(23), pages 1829-1838.
    2. Qiwei Chen, 2013. "Risk and seasonal effects: international evidence," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(4), pages 299-311, November.

    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. Robert J. Sweeney & Robert F. Scherer & Janet Goulet & Waldemar M. Goulet, 1996. "Investment Behavior and the Small Firm Effect," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 5(3), pages 251-269, Fall.
    2. Krzysztof Borowski, 2016. "Analysis Of Monthly Rates Of Return In April On The Example Of Selected World Stock Exchange Indices," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 11(2), pages 307-325, June.
    3. Obalade Adefemi A. & Muzindutsi Paul-Francois, 2019. "Calendar Anomalies, Market Regimes, and the Adaptive Market Hypothesis in African Stock Markets," Journal of Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, Sciendo, vol. 27(4), pages 71-94, December.
    4. Lynch, Andrew & Puckett, Andy & Yan, Xuemin (Sterling), 2014. "Institutions and the turn-of-the-year effect: Evidence from actual institutional trades," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 56-68.
    5. Cameron Truong, 2013. "The January effect, does options trading matter?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 38(1), pages 31-48, April.
    6. Stilianos Fountas & Konstantinos Segredakis, 2002. "Emerging stock markets return seasonalities: the January effect and the tax-loss selling hypothesis," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 291-299.
    7. Khushboo Aggarwal & Mithilesh Kumar Jha, 2023. "Stock returns seasonality in emerging asian markets," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 30(1), pages 109-130, March.
    8. Abdul Rashid & Saba Kausar, 2019. "Testing the Monthly Calendar Anomaly of Stock Returns in Pakistan: A Stochastic Dominance Approach," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 83-104.
    9. Cristina Ortiz & Gloria Ramirez & Luis Vicente, 2010. "Quarterly return patterns in the Spanish stock market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(23), pages 1829-1838.
    10. Christopher K. Ma & Ramesh P. Rao & Herbert J. Weinraub, 1988. "The Seasonality In Convertible Bond Markets: A Stock Effect Or Bond Effect?," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 11(4), pages 335-347, December.
    11. Paul Alagidede & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2009. "Calendar Anomalies in the Ghana Stock Exchange," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 8(1), pages 1-23, April.
    12. Andrew Coutts & Christos Kaplanidis & Jennifer Roberts, 2000. "Security price anomalies in an emerging market: the case of the Athens Stock Exchange," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(5), pages 561-571.
    13. 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).
    14. Zainudin Arsad & J. Andrew Coutts, 1997. "Security price anomalies in the London International Stock Exchange: a 60 year perspective," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(5), pages 455-464.
    15. Qiwei Chen, 2013. "Risk and seasonal effects: international evidence," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(4), pages 299-311, November.
    16. Charles P. Jones & Jack W. Wilson, 1989. "An Analysis Of The January Effect In Stocks And Interest Rates Under Varying Monetary Regimes," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 12(4), pages 341-354, December.
    17. JOhnny Kang & Tapio Pekkala & Christopher Polk & Ruy Ribeiro, 2011. "Stock prices under pressure; How tax and interest rates drive returns at the turn of the tax year," FMG Discussion Papers dp671, Financial Markets Group.
    18. James M. Poterba & Scott J. Weisbenner, 2001. "Capital Gains Tax Rules, Tax‐loss Trading, and Turn‐of‐the‐year Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 353-368, February.
    19. Arbab Khalid Cheema & Wenjie Ding & Qingwei Wang, 2023. "The cross-section of January effect," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(6), pages 513-530, October.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    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:taf:apfiec:v:17:y:2007:i:13:p:1027-1035. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAFE20 .

    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.