Purpose of the article is to disentangle different calendar effects which leave efficiency holes in Lithuanian market. This paper presents and tests if commonly described seasonal patterns exist in Lithuanian stock market. Analysis of three different sections: period-of-the-year; week-of-the-month and day-of-the-week, suggests that calendar effects do exist in this market. The multitude of explanations for the seasonal effect leaves the reader confused about its primary cause(s): is it tax-loss selling, window dressing, information, bid-ask bounce, or a combination of these causes? The confusion arises, in part, because evidence has generally been presented in support of a particular hypothesis though the same evidence may be consistent with another hypothesis.
Methodology/methods are logical and systemic analysis of research literature based on the comparative and generalization methods as well as statistical methods.
Scientific aim of the article is the lack of arguments questioning if market prices operating system is fully effective. Novelty of the paper is to the answer to the question what seasonal anomalies are also present in the stock market of new open economy countries.
Findings show that using this modified strategy investor could achieve 20.7% compounded annual growth rate versus 7.8% achieved using simply holding stocks throughout. The hypothesis asserts that returns generally will be greater following the “January effect”. There is limited amount of data for constructing robust seasonal strategies so we modified Buy and Hold strategy with simple rules of using best and worst months to show how they influence OMXV index performance.
In the conclusions, empirical results using stock index returns for 2000 - 2010 support the hypothesis in Lithuaian stock market. Abnormal activity of OMXV index’s performance is found in the end of summer and throughout autumn. August is best performer of the year while October is performing worst.
