The Low Price Anomaly: the Intriguing Case of the Polish Stock Market
Inzinerine Ekonomika-Engineering Economics, 2016, 27(2), 163-174.
12 Pages Posted: 15 May 2015 Last revised: 10 May 2016
Date Written: May 14, 2015
Abstract
This study investigates the low-price effect on the Polish stock market. By adopting sorting, cross-sectional tests and checks of the monotonic relation, we have examined the performance of the portfolios formed on the prices of over 850 companies listed on the Polish stock market within the years 2000-2014. Contrary to the globally prevailing evidence, the expensive stocks have significantly outperformed the cheap stocks. Additional sorts on value, size and momentum may be used further to improve the price-based strategies while the strongest anomaly has been identified among the growth companies. We hypothesize that the reverse character of the low-price anomaly may be explained by the impact of another phenomena: the underperformance of lottery-stocks. With the exception of the growth stocks, the reverse low-price effect is no longer significant after the exclusion of NewConnect companies. Finally, by adopting an alternative methodology, we have provided convincing out-of-sample evidence in support of the hypothesis of Baker et al. (2009) stating that corporate managers cater to investors by splitting their company shares in response to time-varying catering incentives.
Keywords: low-price effect, Polish stock market, Warsaw Stock Exchange, cross-section of stock returns, splits, catering theory, share prices, stock market anomalies, behavioral finance, factor investing, NewConnect, lottery stocks
JEL Classification: G02, G11, G12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation