Testing the white noise hypothesis of stock returns

Jonathan B. Hill and Kaiji Motegi

Economic Modelling, 2019, vol. 76, issue C, 231-242

Abstract: Weak form efficiency of stock markets implies unpredictability of stock returns in a time series sense, and the latter is tested predominantly under a serial independence or martingale difference assumption. Since these properties rule out weak dependence that may exist in stock returns, it is of interest to test whether returns are white noise. We perform white noise tests assisted by Shao's (2011) blockwise wild bootstrap. We reveal that, in rolling windows, the block structure inscribes an artificial periodicity in bootstrapped confidence bands. We eliminate the periodicity by randomizing a block size. The white noise hypothesis is accepted for Chinese and Japanese markets, suggesting that those markets are weak form efficient. The white noise hypothesis is rejected for U.K. and U.S. markets during the Iraq War and the subprime mortgage crisis due to significantly negative autocorrelations, suggesting that those markets are inefficient in crisis periods.

Keywords: Blockwise wild bootstrap; Randomized block size; Serial correlation; Weak form efficiency; White noise test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C58 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:76:y:2019:i:c:p:231-242

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2018.08.003

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