Comovements and Correlations in International Stock Markets

The interrelationship between international stock markets is becoming a key issue in international portfolio managment and risk measurement. The dynamics of security returns and their risk characteristics have a crucial role in the financial market's therory. Recent empirical studies have tested market efficiency measuring the degree of integration of international financial markets. These studies have shown that international markets react quickly to news but they are volatile and difficult to predict and with a changing correlation structure of security returns among countries.In this paper we analyze the nature of the relationship between the major international stock markets in Canada, Japan, U.K. and the U.S., using the common trends and common cycles approach. We investigate the presence of co-movements trying to detect a long-term stationary component, the common trend, and a short term stationary cyclical component, among international stock markets. The implications on international portfolio management are alos discussed