The Ex-Day Phenomenon In Swedish Industries

Sammanfattning: According to the efficient market hypothesis, a leading financial theory, all information available is accounted for in the valuation of a company. However, this has been shown to not always be the case, especially when publicly noted companies are distributing dividends. When a dividend is distributed the drop in stock price is often lower than the size of the dividend, giving an unfair profit to the shareholders indicating an anomaly. This anomaly, which has had its existence proven in multiple countries, has been named the ex-day phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the ex-day phenomenon differs in different sectors of the Swedish stock market. The approach of the study is of a quantitative form with dividend and stock price data collected from a total of 137 companies within 13 different sectors.The results from the t-test showed a significant ex-day phenomenon in ten of the 13 industries examined using a 5% significance level and in seven of the 13 industries using a 1% significance level. The industry with the largest ex-day phenomenon was financial services and the industry with the lowest ex-day phenomenon was consumer products and services. An internal comparison between industries was made using a non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. The test showed an adjusted statistical significance on a 5% significance level between the industry consumer products and services and the three industries financial services, medical equipment and services as well as industrial goods and services.