Portfolio Rebalancing and the Turn‐of‐the‐Year Effect

This paper finds that, for the 1935-86 period, the market's risk-return relation does not have a January seasonal. The findings differ from those of other studies due to the use of value-weighted, rather than equally-weighted, portfolios. Inferences are sensitive to the weighting procedure because of the small-firm return patterns in January. In particular, even in those Januaries for which the market return is negative, small-firm returns are positive, and they are more positive the higher is beta. This is consistent with the portfolio rebalancing explanation of the turn-of-the-year effect. Copyright 1989 by American Finance Association.

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