July
proves to be an unlucky month for securities investors, according to Ho Quoc
Tuan and Phung Duc Nam at HCM City
Economics University.







VietNamNet Bridge would
like to introduce the briefed article by the two authors published on Thoi bao
Kinh te Vietnam.







Analyses of
the periods of the stock market in other countries in the world show that there
exist months that prove to be unlucky for securities investors.







In the US, people say
“Sell in May and go away”, in reference to the so-called ‘Halloween effect’.
The stock purchases in the period from November to April always bring higher
profit than the purchases in the period from May to October.







It is quite
a surprise that the thing is true not only in the US,
but in other countries, where Halloween is not a tradition, like in Japan or Australia.







In the US,
profitability is often the highest in January, which is explained by the fact
that investors sell stocks in December, when the fiscal year ends, and purchase
stocks in January. However, the ‘January effect’ exists in other countries
where the fiscal year does not end in December.







And so, it
has been asked if the effect exists in Vietnam.







It seems
that the ‘Halloween effect’ exists in Vietnam as well. Statistics show
that profitability from May to October is always low compared to profitability
from November to April.







The most
interesting thing from our discovery is that the profitability is very high in
January and November, while the profitability in July is very low. The ‘January
effect’ also exists in Vietnam
as the profitability in this month proves to be the highest. Even when the
stock market falls like this year, and the profitability is negative, the
profit in January 2008 was less negative than February and March.







We have
also found out that July is the month when the profitability is always the
lowest. No July has seen positive profitability since Vietnam’s stock
market began operating. And the ‘July effect’ is not seen in any other stock
market.







To explain
the ‘Halloween effect’, people say that investors always go on summer vacation
in May; therefore, the market liquidity is always low in this month and there
are few transactions.







No
convincing answer has been found to explain the ‘July effect’ in Vietnam, though.







Is it
because companies all pay dividends in July and issue new shares in July? We
don’t have enough materials and data about the share issuances that took place
in the past.







However,
experts say that companies do not issue shares or pay dividends only in July.