The Weekend and January Effect in the Ghana Stock Market

The aim of this study is to analyze the Weekend and January effect in the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) using daily closing prices of GSE-All Share Index (ASI) and Composite Index (CI) between the period of January 4th, 2005 and December 31st, 2013. The dataset covers the period of 2005 to 2010 (6 years) for the ASI and 2011 to 2013 (3 years) for the CI. The following results are obtained based on a parametric regression using dummy variables. First, no weekly effect or anomaly is documented for both GSE-ASI and GSE-CI. Second, market abnormalities are captured for both GSE-ASI and GSE-CI over their respective entire periods. However, no consistent April effect is found for ASI when the period was segregated into two periods of three years. The April effect is uncovered for the GSE-ASI at 5% significant level while the January effect is found for the GSE-CI at 1% significant level.