Turns out Friday 13th isn’t such an unlucky day for investors
Friday the 13th might be lucky for some after all.
Brian Lucey, professor of finance at the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin has posted some of the academic literature on how stocks perform on days like this.
Turns out it's not too bad. Lucey found in his 2000 paper "Friday the 13th: International Evidence" that "there is some evidence that returns on Friday the 13th are statistically different from, and generally greater than, returns on other Friday returns."
In the 1999 paper "Friday the thirteenth and the Financial Times Industrial Ordinary Shares Index 1935-94" J. Andrew Coutts finds that "returns are higher on Friday the 13th than on other Fridays" in the UK.
Yet across seven emerging Asian stock markets – India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand" – there is "no systematic pattern".
The 2013 paper "Is There a Friday the 13th Effect in Emerging Asian Stock Markets?" finds that on Friday the 13ths in South Korea returns are higher – but in the Philippines the day may actually be unlucky – there is a "significant Friday the 13th effect … for mean returns".