The Stocks Market Overreaction On The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (Klse)

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Date
2000-05
Authors
Tjan, Suwandi
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Abstract
This paper examines the short run overreaction in Malaysian stocks returns from January to December 1997. The main objectives of this study are (1) to examine whether stocks which perfonned extremely well in recent past (winners) tend to do less well in the following period and stocks which performed extremely bad in a period (losers) will perform better in the next period as claimed by the overreaction hypothesis. (2) to examine whether investors are able to earn abnonnal profit by buying losers and selling winners short. The top and worst 10 weekly performing stocks as reported by The Sun are used to define winners and losers. The performance of these stocks measured by market excess return, are then tracked in the following 3 weeks to see if there is any reversals in the performance. The results of the test indicate that there are indeed some degrees of.,.return reversals. The excess returns of winners tend to be negative for the next three weeks subsequent to the ranking period. The excess return of losers are still negative in the test period, the magnitude of negative excess returns has been reduced. Results of another test reveals that a trading strategy of buying losers and selling winners short will not yield any positive abnormal return. In fact, investors may lose their money by employing that strategy. Even though to some extent past prices can be used to predict future prices, this study concludes the market is quite efficient in its weakest form.
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Investments , Stock exchanges
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