Abstract
The well-known weekend effect has been reversing in Major U.S. indices from late 1980s to late 1990s. The correlation between Monday and Friday returns also exhibited a declining trend, and fluctuated around zero in the 1990s. A power ratio method is developed to measure consistently the relative contribution of Friday and Monday returns to the return of the week in each individual year. The revealed dynamics of the anomaly explains why previous researchers report different or conflicting findings. The anomaly may not be necessarily related to firm size.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham, A. and D. Ikenberry, “The Individual Investor and the Weekend Effect.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 29(2), 263-278 (1994).
Aggarwal, R. and R. Pietra, “Seasonal and Day-of-the-Week Effects in Four Emerging Stock.” The Financial Review 24(4) 541-551 (1989).
Board, J. L. and C. M. Sutcliffe, “The Weekend Effect In UK Stock Market Returns.” Journal of Business Finance and Accounting 15(2), 199-214 (1988).
Branch, B. and D. Echevarria, “The Impact of Bid-Ask Prices on Market Anomalies.” The Financial Review 26(2), 249-269 (1991).
Branch B., J. Jung and T. Yang, “The Monday Merger Effect.” International Review of Financial Analysis 10, 1-18 (2001).
Brusa, J., P. Liu and C. Schulman, “The Weekend Effect, ‘Reverse’ Weekend Effect and Firm Size.” Journal of Business Finance and Accounting 27(5/6), 555-575 (2000).
Chow, E., P. Hsiao and M. E. Solt, “Trading Returns for the Weekend Effect Using Intraday Data.” Journal of Business Finance and Accounting 24(3/4) 425-445 (1997).
Chatterjee, A., “Market Anomalies Revisited.” Journal of Applied Business Research 13(4), 47-56 (1997).
Clay, S., “The Nonparallel Weekend Effect in the Stock and Bond Markets.” The Journal of Financial Research 17(4), 531-539 (1994).
Compton, W., “Tax-free Trading on Calendar Stock and Bond Market Patterns.” Journal of Economics and Finance 24(1), 64-77 (2000).
Compton, W. and R. Kunkel, “A Tax-Free Exploitation of the Weekend Effect: A ‘switching’ Strategy in the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF).” American Business Review 17(2), 17-23 (1999).
Compton, W. and R. Kunkel, “Tax-Free Trading on Calendar Stock and Bond Market Patterns.” Journal of Economics and Finance 24(1), 64-76 (2000).
Connolly, R. A., “An Examination of the Robustness of the Weekend Effect.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 24(2), 133-169 (1989).
Coutts, J. and P. Hayes, “The Weekend Effect, the Stock Exchange Account and the Financial Times Industrial Ordinary Shares Index: 1987–1994.” Applied Financial Economics 9(1), 67-71 (1999).
Cross, F., “The Behavior of Stock Prices on Fridays and Mondays.” Financial Analysts Journal 29, 67-69 (1973).
Dyl, E., M. Stanley, J. Lakonishok and M. Levi, “Weekend Effects on Stock Returns: A Comment/Reply.” The Journal of Finance 40(1), 347-351 (1985).
Fortune, P., “Are Stock Returns Different Over Weekends? A Jump Diffusion Analysis of the Weekend Effect.” New England Economic Review 3-20 (1999).
French, D., “The Weekend Effect on the Distribution of Stock Prices: Implications for Option Pricing.” Journal of Financial Economics 13(4), 547-559 (1984).
French, K., “Stock Returns and the Weekend Effect.” Journal of Financial Economics 8, 55-69 (1980).
Gu, Y. A., “The Declining January Effect: Evidence from U.S. Equity Markets.” Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 43(2), 395-404 (2003).
Gu, Y. A., “The Diminishing Weekend Effect: Experience of Five G7 Countries.” Journal of Accounting and Financial Research 11(5), (2003).
Gu, Y. A. and J. Finnerty, “The Evolution of Market Efficiency: 103 Years Daily Data of the Dow.” Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting 18(3), 219-237 (2002).
Higgins, E., S. Howton and S. Perfect, “The Impact of the Day of the Week on IPO Return Autocorrelation and Cross-Correlation.” Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics 39(1), 57-67 (2000).
Hindmarch, S., D. Jentsch and D. Drew, “A Note on Canadian Stock Returns and the Weekend Effect.” Journal of Business Administration, Vancouver, 14(2), 163-172 (1984).
Jaffe, J. and R. Westerfield, “The Week-End Effect in Common Stock Returns: The International Evidence.” The Journal of Finance 40(2), 433-455 (1985).
Kamara, A. “New Evidence on the Monday Seasonal in Stock Returns.” Journal of Business 70, 63-84 (1997).
Keim, D. and R. Stambaugh, “A Further Investigation of the Weekend Effect in Stock Returns.” The Journal of Finance 39(3), 819-840 (1984).
Kim, C. and J. Park, “Holiday Effects and Stock Returns: Further Evidence.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 29(1), 145-158 (1994).
Lakonishok, J., “The Weekend Effect: Trading Patterns of Individual and Inst.” The Journal of Finance 45(1), 231-244 (1990).
Lakonishok, J. and M. Levi, “Weekend Effects on Stock Returns: A Note.” The Journal of Finance 37(3), 883-889 (1982).
Miller, E., “Why a Weekend Effect?” Journal of Portfolio Management 14(4), 43-49 (1988).
Najand, M. and K. Yung, “Conditional Heteroskedasticity and the Weekend Effect in S&P 500 Index Futures.” Journal of Business Finance and Accounting 21(4), 603-612 (1994).
Price, V. and M. Theobald, “Seasonality Estimation in Thin Markets.” The Journal of Finance 39(2), 377-392 (1984).
Rogalski, R., “New Findings Regarding Day-of-the-Week Returns Over Trading and Non-Trading Periods: A Note.” The Journal of Finance 39(5), 1603-1614 (1984).
Schatzberg, J., “The Weekend Effect and Corporate Dividend Announcements.” The Journal of Financial Research 15(1) 69-78 (1992).
Seyed, M. and M. J. Perry, “The reversal of the Monday effect: New Evidence from US Equity Markets.” Journal of Business Finance & Accounting 28(7/8), 1043-1065 (2001).
Sias, R. and L. Starks, “The Day-of-the-Week Anomaly: The Role of Institutional Investors.” Financial Analysts Journal 51(3), 58-68 (1995).
Singleton, J. and J. Wingender, “The Nonparallel Weekend Effect in the Stock and Bond Markets.” The Journal of Financial Research 17(4), 531-539 (1994).
Steeley, J., “A Note on Information Seasonality and the Disappearance of the Weekend Effect in the UK Stock Market.” Journal of Banking and Finance 25(10), 1941 (2001).
Sullivan, R., A. Timmermann and H. White, “Dangers of Data Mining: The Case of Calendar Effects in Stock Returns.” Journal of Econometrics 105(1), 249-286 (2001).
Tong, W., “International Evidence on Weekend Anomalies.” Journal of Financial Research (23)4, 495-522 (2000).
Wang, K., J. Erickson and Y. Li, “A New Look at the Monday Effect.” The Journal of Finance 52(5), 2171-2187 (1997).
Ziemba, W., “Comment on ‘Why a Weekend Effect?’” Journal of Portfolio Management 19(2), 93-99 (1993).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gu, A.Y. The Reversing Weekend Effect: Evidence from the U.S. Equity Markets. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting 22, 5–14 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:REQU.0000006183.42549.50
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:REQU.0000006183.42549.50