Day of the Week Effect in Cryptocurrencies' Returns and Volatility

Abstract

Calendar anomalies as the seasonal tendencies in stock returns are the signal of irregular behaviour of stock markets. These anomalies have been comprehensively studied in many matured as well as emerging stock markets. But there is lack of exploration of calendar anomalies in the cryptocurrency market. So, the present treatise is an attempt to fill this lacuna by studying day of the week effect on cryptocurrencies' returns and volatility. This study is based on the prices of eight cryptocurrencies (viz. Bitcoin, EOS, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Tether, XRP and Stellar) for a period starting from July 2017 and up to March 2020. The series of daily and day-wise returns were initially studied for stationarity using Ng-Perron tests and augmented Dickey–Fuller test. The results from these tests confirmed that the cryptocurrencies' return series are stationary. The day of the week effect on cryptocurrencies returns was studied by introducing the dummies for each day of the week in the ordinary least square regression equation. The residuals from the ordinary least square regression equation were tested for ARCH effect using Engle's ARCH test. The results from the test confirmed the presence of ARCH effect in all series. The GARCH (1,1) model and PARCH model were further applied to account for ARCH effect and these models confirmed the presence of the day of the week effect in all the cryptocurrencies' returns and volatility except for day of week effect in Bitcoin and Tether returns. So, the significant day of the week effect was present in all cryptocurrencies' returns and volatility but the significant day of the week effect was absent in Bitcoin's returns and Tether's returns. These findings of significant day effect may help the existing and potential investors in taking investment decision in contemporary scenario of no ban in cryptocurrency market in India.