Valresultat och börskurser : En eventstudie om riksdagsvalens effekter på Stockholmsbörsen

Sammanfattning: Background: It is always fascinating to observe the events that affect the stock market, especially as the numbers of influencing factors are so many and various. Political elections are important events in society and affect the corporate environment in different ways depending on which political party that is in power. This brings up the question of whether political elections are important enough to affect the stock market; and it is this question we intend to analyse in this paper. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether political elections affect the stock market and to discuss the reasons for any possible affect that might be found. Procedure: An appropriate and thoroughly tested method to investigate if an event affects the stock market or not, is to do an event study. Subsequently we chose to do an event study on whether the Swedish general elections in 2002 and 2006 affected the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In order to give the analysis more depth we have also chosen to interview people with knowledge of the stock market. The results from the event study, the interviews as well as previous research on the subject are then compared and analysed. Results and conclusions: The conclusion of the analysis is that there was a significant abnormal return at the time of the general elections of 2002 and 2006, and that it was negative for both years. The deviation of the abnormal returns was smaller at the time of the general election in 2006 than it was in 2002, when the return was even more negative. A further dimension of the analysis is seen when the abnormal returns are studied separately for each line of business on the stock market. By doing so, it is possible to see to what extent the various trades are affected, and whether the abnormal returns are positive or negative. Despite the fact that a significant abnormal return was found at the time of the general election both in 2002 and in 2006, it is not possible to put it in relation to the general election since there is such a large quantity of other factors that could have influenced the stock market.