Seasonal Trends in Lithuanian Stock Market

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

Does mood affect trading behavior?

We test whether investor mood affects trading with data on all stock market transactions in Finland, utilizing variation in daylight and local weather. We find some evidence that environmental mood variables (local weather, length of day, daylight saving and lunar phase) affect investors’ direction of trade and volume. The effect magnitudes are roughly comparable to those of classical seasonals, such as the Monday effect. The statistical significance of the mood variables is weak in many cases, however. Only very little of the day-to-day variation in trading is collectively explained by all mood variables and calendar effects, but lower frequency variation seems connected to holiday seasons

The weekly structure of US stock prices

In this paper we use fractional integration techniques to examine the degree of integration of four US stock market indices, namely the Standard and Poor, Dow Jones, Nasdaq and NYSE, at a daily frequency from January 2005 till December 2009. We analyse the weekly structure of the series and investigate their characteristics depending on the specific day of the week. The results indicate that the four series are highly persistent; a small degree of mean reversion (i.e., orders of integration strictly smaller than 1) is found in some cases for S&P and the Dow Jones indices. The most interesting findings are the differences in the degree of dependence for different days of the week. Specifically, lower orders of integration are systematically observed for Mondays and Fridays, consistently with the “day of the week” effect frequently found in financial data.The second-named author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (ECO2008-03035 ECON Y FINANZAS, Spain) and from a PIUNA Project from the University of Navarra

Intercultural Challenges in Networked Learning

This paper gives an account of themes that emerged from a preliminary analysis of a large corpus of electronic communications in an online, mediated course for intercultural learners. The goals were to test assumptions that electronic communication is internationally standardized, to identify any problematic aspects of such communications, and to construct a framework for the analysis of electronic communications using constructs from intercultural communications theory. We found that cyberspace itself has a culture(s), and is not culture-free. Cultural gaps can exist between individuals, as well as between individuals and the dominant cyberculture, increasing the chances of miscommunication. The lack of elements inherent in face-to-face communication further problematizes intercultural communications online by limiting opportunities to give and save face, and to intuit meaning from non-verbal cues. We conclude that electronic communication across cultures presents distinctive challenges, as well as opportunities to course planners

Time-Slice Rationality and Self-Locating Belief

The epistemology of self-locating belief concerns itself with how rational agents ought to respond to certain kinds of indexical information. I argue that those who endorse the thesis of Time-Slice Rationality ought to endorse a particular view about the epistemology of self-locating belief, according to which ‘essentially indexical’ information is never evidentially relevant to non-indexical matters. I close by offering some independent motivations for endorsing Time-Slice Rationality in the context of the epistemology of self-locating belief

Project-based Learning to Raise Students\u27 Speaking Ability: Its\u27 Effect and Implementation (a Mix Method Research in Speaking II Subject at Stain Ponorogo)

This research tries to attempt to know the effect of Project-based learning toward speaking ability and its\u27 effective implementation. The design of the research sequential was designs in which data that are collected and examined in one stage inform the data collected in the next phase. This research applied a quantitative design for the first stage. It is categorized into causal comparative method, or ex post facto research design and the second stage is qualitative design. Population in this research was the 2 STAIN Ponorogo. The total numbers of the students are 85 students and the sample was 70 students. The researcher used questionnaires, test, observation and interview as data collection. Since the hypothesis is intended to find the effect of the Project-Based Learning toward students\u27 speaking ability, the Simple Linier Regression by using SPSS 19.00 for Windows was applied. The second phase, the result of observation and interview were analyzed by Miles and Huberman\u27s view of qualitative data analysis consisting of data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusion. The result of analysis showed that there was significant effect of Project-Based Learning toward students\u27 speaking ability. Moreover, the effective procedures for the implementation of Project-Based Learning are (a) dividing the class into group, (b) explaining the project and (c) performing the project. At last, the students showed significantly positive attitude toward the implementation of Project-Based Learning in speaking class. semester of English Department Students in STAIN Ponorogo. The total numbers of the students are 85 students and the sample was 70 students. The researcher used questionnaires, test, observation and interview as data collection. Since the hypothesis is intended to find the effect of the Project-Based Learning toward students\u27 speaking ability, the Simple Linier Regression by using SPSS 19.00 for Windows was applied. The second phase, the result of observation and interview were analyzed by Miles and Huberman\u27s view of qualitative data analysis consisting of data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusion. The result of analysis showed that there was significant effect of Project-Based Learning toward students\u27 speaking ability. Moreover, the effective procedures for the implementation of Project-Based Learning are (a) dividing the class into group, (b) explaining the project and (c) performing the project. At last, the students showed significantly positive attitude toward the implementation of Project-Based Learning in speaking class

Handel recovering: fresh light on his affairs in 1737

The summer and autumn of 1737 remain a foggy patch in Handel biography owing to poor documentation and Handel’s absence from London. We do not know whether his illness led to a rapprochement with the ‘Nobility’ opera, how his visit to Aix-la-Chapel complicated the new opera season or, especially, whether these developments relate to Farinelli’s defection to Spain. This shaky factual ground also restricts our understanding of later events such as Handel’s lucrative benefit in March 1738 and the celebrated Roubiliac statue in Vauxhall Gardens. Thanks to surviving issues of the Daily Advertiser, however, we now can replenish the documentary pool and re-examine Handel’s affairs and their context during this period

Visual Detection of Structural Changes in Time-Varying Graphs Using Persistent Homology

Topological data analysis is an emerging area in exploratory data analysis and data mining. Its main tool, persistent homology, has become a popular technique to study the structure of complex, high-dimensional data. In this paper, we propose a novel method using persistent homology to quantify structural changes in time-varying graphs. Specifically, we transform each instance of the time-varying graph into metric spaces, extract topological features using persistent homology, and compare those features over time. We provide a visualization that assists in time-varying graph exploration and helps to identify patterns of behavior within the data. To validate our approach, we conduct several case studies on real world data sets and show how our method can find cyclic patterns, deviations from those patterns, and one-time events in time-varying graphs. We also examine whether persistence-based similarity measure as a graph metric satisfies a set of well-established, desirable properties for graph metrics