We examine stock return predictability of the South African (SA) market using lagged country monthly returns of the US, the UK, Germany, and Japan during the period from January 1973 to December 2014. Our results show that SA market return and industry returns can be significantly predicted by lagged US market return and industry returns, mainly in the pre-1996 market change period. Lagged German and Japanese returns have no predictive ability, while lagged UK returns only provide some degree of predictive power. However, the weaker return predictability for SA stock market in the post-1996 period could be due to liquidity effects of economic reforms, regulatory changes and an enhanced information environment on the SA market.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.