With the benefit of very high frequency (25 million 1 minute observations) and recent data (2001) for the UK, this paper explores a number of intra day patterns of stock market behaviour. More specifically, a distinct reverse J shaped bid-ask spread pattern is noted for SETS securities, a...

The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on the comparative performance of mutual and stock retail banks by examining a unique episode in the history of financial services; namely, when four of the largest UK building societies (accounting for approximately 60 per cent of the...

Investors have been shown to have particular preferences when it comes to the characteristics of stock they hold in their portfolios, while prior gains and losses have been shown to impact on individuals’ economic decisions, both in an investment context and more widely. This paper is the...

This paper uses the well known pre-holiday stock market anomaly to clarify the uses and limitations of the academic approach to testing for such anomalies with respect to the differing requirements of academics and investors. The approach is not designed to produce information suitable for...

This study considers the risk and return of stocks following price innovations of all sizes on UK data. The results indicate that over a long period of time it has been possible to estimate, to some extent, the expected returns and the variance of returns on a given day from the return on the...