The China A shares follow random walk but the B shares do not

The China A-Share stocks and the China B-Share stocks are common stocks issued by companies incorporated in China. These two classes of common stocks differ in the nationality of the investors each is restricted to by law. For the most part, the A shares, quoted in the Chinese yuan, or renminbi, are for Chinese nationals while the B shares, quoted in foreign currencies, are for non-Chinese nationals and residents of Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This paper identified eighty-six companies issuing both the A and B shares and tested if these shares weekly returns follow a random walk. Employing the Lo and MacKinlay variance ratio test statistics, it is discovered that five times more B shares rejected the random walk as did the A shares. Moreover, both the Shenzhen and Shanghai B-Share indexes reject the random walk while neither the Shenzhen nor Shanghai A-Share index reject the random walk.

The Taiwan stock market does follow a random walk

Applying the Lo and MacKinlay variance ratio test on the weekly returns from the Taiwan stock market from 1990 to mid 2006, I obtained results strongly indicative of the fact that not only does the Taiwan composite stock index move in a random walk fashion, returns for the individual stocks do so as we. Previous authors employing the same methodology obtained opposite results, namely, that the movements of the Taiwan stock composite index do not follow a random walk.random walk