Risk-Adjusted Seasonality in Muslim Frontier Stock Markets

We investigate the evidence of three risk-adjusted calendar anomalies in eight frontier markets.

Our sample consists of the daily closing prices of their stock indices for the period of January 2006 to September 2019. We categorize the data with respect to day-of-the-week, Lunar calendar and Islamic calendar. Using Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) eight Markets Index as our proxy of the market portfolio, most of the frontier markets tested exhibit calendar seasonality. We confirm that systematic risk varies with respect to day-of-the-week, Lunar months and Islamic months. After consideration of time-varying risk and applying Bonferroni correction, few frontier markets exhibit profitable investment opportunities from calendar return anomalies for active investment managers. This study contributes to the existing literature by documenting evidence of the presence of both day-of-the-week and month-of-the-year return seasonality both for the Gregorian and Islamic calendar for frontier markets.