Inefficiencies in the Indian Capital Market
Volume 17, Number 1 Article by Paras Singhal March, 2005
Award Winning Student Essay : Inefficiencies in the Indian Capital Market : Can Overnight Gain be Used as Predictor of Day Gain? :
The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) states that at any given time, security prices fully reflect all available information. A tremendous amount of evidence supports the hypothesis. However, researchers have uncovered numerous stock market anomalies that seem to contradict the EMH. In this award winning student essay, Paras Singhal investigates one such anomaly, the 'overnight predictor' anomaly.
The objective of this research was to investigate the possibility of (a) predicting the value of the daytime gain using the value of the overnight gain, and (b) getting significantly more returns by overnight trading as compared to day-trading or long term trading. The daily opening and closing market values of six years, from April 1996 to March 2002 of a market index were first analysed, and certain trading rules were formed. The rules were applied to the market index values of the past two years. The performance of the trading rule was then compared with trading position of making a long term investment in the stock index.
The results showed that, while giving much higher returns than the trading method when the market is relatively stable, the rule of using 'overnight gains as a predictor of day gains' does not hold in a highly volatile market. Thus out-of-sample tests of market anomalies are essential before reaching conclusions about the efficiency of any financial market. Some directions for future research emerging from the study include investigating the phenomenon in the developed markets, which are expected to be more efficient; examining the behaviour of investors and fund managers to find out if they take the overnight shift in the stock prices into consideration in devising trading strategies for the following day; and developing an elaborate and more accurate model factoring in details like issue of ESOPs and issue of preferential shares.
Reprint No 05102