Effect of national annual budget reading on equity returns at the Nairobi Securities Exchange

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of budget reading on equity returns at Nairobi Securities Exchange. The study adopts descripting staristics design using event model methodology to establish the correlation between the variables. Secondary data on stock performance around the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 budget reading dates was collected from the NSE database. Data analysis was done using SPSS program to generate the descriptive statistics, and the study finds that the reading of national budget has significant effect on the stock returns at NSE during the event period, depending on information content. Analysis of the AAR, CAR and SCAR of the companies in the NSE-20 share index, during the 5 day event period before and after the annual national budget reading finds that other than year 2010 that records no statistical significance of SCAR, the SCAR p value for 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013 are all less than p = 0.05, suggesting that the market returns for four years deviated significantly from their means during the event period of budget readings. Therefore, the study recommends that investors, investment banks, listed companies and the capital markets authority to consider the effect of national budget reading on stock returns, to formulate policies that can cussion investors against the effects of budget reading.