• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.201-234
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• 2003

This paper examines the day of the week effect focusing on the effect of the settlement procedures on the stock price in seven major international stock markets. Settlement dates or procedures may have an effect on rate of return distributions in international stock markets. Those Settlement procedures are different among various international stock markets. Furthermore, several international stock markets change their systems of settlement procedures. On the New York stock exchanges, stock transactions are settled in five business days after the transaction. However, they changed settlement procedures from five business days to three business days from 1995. Those settlement procedures on the London stock exchanges and the Paris stock exchanges were changes from the fixed settlement date systems to the fixed settlement lag systems. Thus, this paper examines the effect of the changes in settlement procedures on the stock price in several stock markets. I found that changes of settlement dates or procedures have an effect on the rate of return distributions for specific days in some stock markets. This paper also examines the day of the week effect for seven international stock markets. I found that strong weekend effect before the period of 1990. However, the weekend effect has disappeared during the period from 1990 to 2002 in international stock markets.