IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/95296.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The extended Friday the 13th Effect in the US stock returns

Author

Listed:
  • Dumitriu, Ramona
  • Stefanescu, Răzvan

Abstract

The classical Friday the 13th Effect refers to a calendar anomaly of financial markets which is generated by the fear of bad luck shared by the superstitious investors. As a result of their behavior, the returns from the supposed unlucky day of Friday the 13th are significant lower than those from the other Fridays. The superstition could also affect the returns from the trading days there are adjacent to Friday the 13th. In order to avoid the bad luck, some investors sell their stocks a trading day before and their transactions lead to a fall of the prices. Those who are reluctant to buy stocks on Friday the 13th delay such transactions to the next trading day causing prices to rise. In time, the knowledge about this pattern could induce significant changes in investors’ behavior, even to those that are not superstitious. Once become aware that one trading day before Friday the 13th the stock prices are usually low, many investors would prefer to sell two or three trading days before. There also were investors that would buy stocks not one trading day after Friday the 13th, when the prices are expected to be high, but two or three trading days after. Other investors could exploit the opportunities to buy cheap on Friday the 13th or one trading day before or to sell high one trading day after and their transactions could attenuate the abnormal returns from these days. In such ways the classical form of Friday the 13th Effect could be replaced by an extended form which consists in abnormal returns for a specific time interval that starts some trading days before the supposed unlucky day and ends some trading days after. This paper explores the behavior of the stock returns of 42 companies, from seven sectors of the United States economy, in the period January 2010 – March 2019, for a time interval that starts three trading days before Friday the 13th and ends three trading days after. The results indicate, for many of them, significant low returns in some trading days before Friday the 13th and/or significant high returns some trading days after. We also found some particularities of the extended Friday the 13th Effect among the seven sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Dumitriu, Ramona & Stefanescu, Răzvan, 2019. "The extended Friday the 13th Effect in the US stock returns," MPRA Paper 95296, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Jul 2019.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:95296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/95296/1/MPRA_paper_95296.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2008. "Dissecting Anomalies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1653-1678, August.
    2. 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.
    3. Agrawal, Anup & Tandon, Kishore, 1994. "Anomalies or illusions? Evidence from stock markets in eighteen countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 83-106, February.
    4. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    5. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    6. Nikunj Patel & Martin Sewell, 2015. "Calendar anomalies: a survey of the literature," International Journal of Behavioural Accounting and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(2), pages 99-121.
    7. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    8. Ruth Seow Kuan Tan & Wong Nee Tat, 1998. "The diminishing calendar anomalies in the stock exchange of Singapore," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 119-125.
    9. Brian Lucey, 2001. "Friday the 13th: international evidence," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(9), pages 577-579.
    10. Josef Lakonishok, Seymour Smidt, 1988. "Are Seasonal Anomalies Real? A Ninety-Year Perspective," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(4), pages 403-425.
    11. Dickey, David A & Fuller, Wayne A, 1981. "Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1057-1072, June.
    12. Brian Lucey & Angel Pardo, 2005. "Why investors should not be cautious about the academic approach to testing for stock market anomalies," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 165-171.
    13. Wessel Marquering & Johan Nisser & Toni Valla, 2006. "Disappearing anomalies: a dynamic analysis of the persistence of anomalies," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 291-302.
    14. Abraham, Abraham & Ikenberry, David L., 1994. "The Individual Investor and the Weekend Effect," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 263-277, June.
    15. Brian Lucey, 2000. "Friday the 13th and the philosophical basis of financial economics," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 24(3), pages 294-301, September.
    16. Ramona Dumitriu & Razvan Stefanescu, 2019. "Stock Prices Behavior Before and After Friday the 13th," Risk in Contemporary Economy, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, pages 20-30.
    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. Razvan STEFANESCU & Ramona DUMITRIU, 2018. "Changes in the stocks prices behavior before and after the public holidays: case of Bucharest Stock Exchange," Risk in Contemporary Economy, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, pages 189-202.
    2. Stefanescu Razvan & Dumitriu Ramona, 2020. "Changes of the Time Intervals Specific to Calendar Anomalies: the Case of TOQ Effect on Bucharest Stock Exchange," Risk in Contemporary Economy, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, pages 264-273.
    3. 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.
    4. Stefanescu Razvan & Dumitriu Ramona, 2021. "The Extended Holiday Effects on Bucharest Stock Exchange during Coronavirus Pandemic," Risk in Contemporary Economy, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, pages 293-303.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Auer, Benjamin R. & Rottmann, Horst, 2014. "Is there a Friday the 13th effect in emerging Asian stock markets?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 1(C), pages 17-26.
    8. Dichtl, Hubert & Drobetz, Wolfgang, 2015. "Sell in May and Go Away: Still good advice for investors?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 29-43.
    9. Foong Soon Cheong, 2016. "Debunking Two Myths of the Weekend Effect," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-9, April.
    10. Mostafa Saidur Rahim Khan & Naheed Rabbani, 2019. "Market Conditions and Calendar Anomalies in Japanese Stock Returns," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 26(2), pages 187-209, June.
    11. Mehmet Hasan Eken & Taylan Ozgür Uner, 2010. "Calendar Effects in the Stock Market and a Practice Relatedn to the Istanbul Stock Exchange Market (ISEM)," Istanbul Stock Exchange Review, Research and Business Development Department, Borsa Istanbul, vol. 12(45), pages 59-95.
    12. Olson, Dennis & Mossman, Charles & Chou, Nan-Ting, 2015. "The evolution of the weekend effect in US markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 56-63.
    13. LeBaron, Blake, 2003. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance,: Philip Hans Franses and Dick van Dijk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, 296 pp., Paperback, ISBN 0-521-77965-0, $33, [UK pound]22.95, [," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 751-752.
    14. Franses,Philip Hans & Dijk,Dick van, 2000. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521779654.
    15. Auer, Benjamin R. & Rottmann, Horst, 2019. "Have capital market anomalies worldwide attenuated in the recent era of high liquidity and trading activity?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 61-79.
    16. Wessel Marquering & Johan Nisser & Toni Valla, 2006. "Disappearing anomalies: a dynamic analysis of the persistence of anomalies," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 291-302.
    17. Balaban, Ercan & Ozgen, Tolga & Karidis, Socrates, 2018. "Intraday and interday distribution of stock returns and their asymmetric conditional volatility: Firm-level evidence," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 503(C), pages 905-915.
    18. Georgios Bampinas & Stilianos Fountas & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2015. "The Day-of-the-Week Effect is Weak: Evidence from the European Real Estate Sector," Working Paper series 15-19, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    19. Tihana Škrinjarić & Branka Marasović & Boško Šego, 2021. "Does the Croatian Stock Market Have Seasonal Affective Disorder?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-16, February.
    20. Paulo M. Gama & Elisabete F. S. Vieira, 2013. "Another look at the holiday effect," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(20), pages 1623-1633, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Extended calendar anomalies; US stock returns; Friday the 13th Effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G19 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:95296. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.