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The Disappearing January/Turn of the Year Effect: Evidence From Stock Index Futures and Cash Markets
Author(s) -
Szakmary Andrew C.,
Kiefer Dean B.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of futures markets
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.88
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1096-9934
pISSN - 0270-7314
DOI - 10.1002/fut.20103
Subject(s) - futures contract , cash , financial economics , economics , stock (firearms) , volatility (finance) , volatility clustering , names of the days of the week , monetary economics , econometrics , finance , autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity , geography , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology
This study examines the returns, relative to the S&P 500, on cash indices and futures tracking smaller stocks around the turn of the year. While we control for volatility clustering, return autocorrelation in small stock indices, and other calendar effects, our main focus is the evolution of the turn of the year effect through time: in particular, whether the effect is smaller or takes place earlier subsequent to the introduction of the S&P Midcap and Russell 2000 futures in 1993. We find that evidence of a traditional turn of the year effect, in both cash and futures, is confined to the pre‐1993 period. Post‐1993, there are no abnormal returns during the turn of the year window as a whole. Interestingly, returns in this period remain high on the last trading day of December, but they are negative across the first five trading days of January. In addition, post‐1993, we often observe significant abnormal returns prior to the traditional turn of the year, i.e., in the pre‐Christmas and post‐Christmas windows. Taken together, our results suggest that market participants may be eliminating the turn of the year effect with the aid of two new futures contracts that are well suited to this purpose. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:755–784, 2004