Monday Effect in the Chinese Stock Market

Abstract

The Monday effect is a well know effect in some countries around the world. The Monday effect is the observation that stock returns on Monday are statically significantly lower than for the rest of the days of the week. There is no obvious fundamental reason behind this occurrence and if it actually exists it might be due to human behavioral patterns. This Monday effect observation originated in the U.S. several decades ago and it has since being observed in several other countries. In this article the occurrence of the Monday effect is analyzed in the mainland China equity market. It was found that for the period from 2011 to 2016 there was no statistically significant Monday effect but interestingly there are indications of a possible Thursday effect. This concept was tested with several market indexes covering the two major mainland China stock exchanges (Shanghai and Shenzhen). These indexes covered also a broad spectrum of company sizes. The ChiNext index, which is a Nasdaq like type of index for the Chinese market, was also included. In this article it was also tested and confirmed that the returns on Chinese equities, as expected, do not follow a normal distribution.