Friday the 13th: Is it Good, Bad or Ugly for Indian equity Market?

The BSE Sensex touched all-time high yesterday, however, today, on Friday, July 13, it is trading lower despite the cues from the global market being favourable. Many of you who are superstitious with triskaidekaphobia (fear of number 13) might be remembered Friday, October 13, 1987, when the historic 'Black Friday', stock market crash occurred. The origin of this probably goes back to 1910 when a novel was published. It revolved around a plot by an evil stock trader to crash the market on Friday the 13th.

Whatever may be the reason, we analyzed the performance of the BSE Sensex since 1979. We compared the percentage of Friday 13 for which the index ended higher than the day before to the percentage for all other days and even those Fridays when it was not the 13th. The result shows that atleast in case of BSE Sensex, Friday the 13th plays some role in giving negative returns. Out of the total 61 such instances, the market closed lower than their opening 32 times, while for 29 times it gave positive returns. Even in case of mean returns, Friday 13 on an average has performed worse than other days. Even if we include only those Fridays when it was not the thirteenth day of the month, the market has fared better than the Fridays when the date was 13.

Therefore, atleast in case of BSE Sensex, the historical data shows that Friday 13 on an average underperformed the normal days and even those Fridays when the date was not 13.