An Empirical Study on Seasonal Analysis in the Indian Stock Market

The presence of the Seasonal or Monthly Effect in stock returns has been reported in several developed and emerging stock markets. This study investigates the existence of seasonality in India’s stock market. The Efficient Market Hypothesis suggests that all securities are priced efficiently to fully reflect all the information intrinsic in the asset. The Seasonal Effects create higher or lower returns depending on the Time Series. They are called Anomalies because they cannot be explained by traditional asset pricing models. Examples of such patterns include e.g. the January Effect, the Day-of-the Week Effect and the Week of the Month Effect etc. Studies on the Seasonal Effects in the Indian Stock Market are limited. In an attempt to fill this gap, this study explores the Indian Stock Market’s Efficiency in the ‘weak form’ in the context of Seasonal Effects. The objective of this paper is to explore the Seasonal Effect on the Indian Stock Market. For the purpose this analysis BSE Sensex index was chosen for a period of ten years from 1st April 2000 to 31st March 2010. The study found that the Day of the Week Effect and Monthly Effect Pattern did not appear to exist in the Indian Stock Market during the study period.