Seasonalities and the January Effect in Stock markets; testing the January Effect in the Greek Stock market
This paper will examine the concept of seasonality and January effect, to determine the validity of the notion that stock markets generally rise during the month of January, following heavy sales in December as investors seek to take advantage of tax loopholes, by getting rid of losing stocks in their investment portfolios. This study will test this hypothesis, with the Greek Stock Exchange in Athens. A few years ago, the stock market of Greece was a relatively small and under-investigated emerging market. Nevertheless, modernization and some other major reforms that have taken place the last 10 years resulted in the market obtaining more depth and width. In the last decade an increasing number of new companies were listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) in order to raise capital, and an increasing number of investors entered the market by investing in corporate stocks. These developments boosted the domestic and international investment interest for the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE), which is now expected to gain the characterization of a more developed market. This paper is to investigate whether there are certain stock price patterns and trends resulting from the seasonality or January effect.
