The search and investigation of stock market anomalies have always been a popular area of research among the academicians. The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) that was once very well accepted and adored the most dominant place in the traditional finance theories, somehow, in recent times, the validity of the same has been questioned. The evidence of various stock market anomalies that document excess profit making opportunities resulted in critical re-examination of EMH. Probably the two most famous anomalies that have attracted the interest of both academicians and practitioners are the ones that are based on stocks return continuation (known as momentum effect) and long-term stock returns reversal (known as overreaction effect). Ever since DeBondt and Thaler (1985) and Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) drew attention towards the overreaction and momentum effect, these have remained as some of the most hotly debated anomalies in the academic literature. The investment strategies based on such continuation and long-term return reversal effects are commonly known as momentum and contrarian strategies, respectively. Both momentum and long-term reversal effect were found to persist in a majority of the out-of-sample tests using data from the U.S. as well as other developed stock markets across different time periods. Initially, most of the early investigations were based on the U.S. stock market, but gradually the investigation for the same spread out internationally to other developed stock markets. As a result, there exists a vast majority of literature supporting momentum and contrarian profitability in majority of the developed markets.

This paper studies the Indian stock market within the framework of momentum and contrarian strategies, using the monthly-adjusted prices of all the stocks listed on National Stock exchange (NSE) having complete data for the sample period January 1997 to March 2013. The findings reveal the presence of statistically significant small term momentum and long term overreaction effect in Indian stock market. Further, the paper also evaluates the predictions of various behavioural models that propose that momentum profits eventually reversed in long term. The evidence of the paper provides support for the behavioural explanation of momentum and overreaction effect in Indian stock market.

Prior return effect - momentum and contrarian, is a well documented phenomenon in developed stock markets. This paper examines if there is any prior return effect in Indian stock market, an advanced emerging market in the world. We use daily price data available for stocks forming part of S&P CNX 500 equity index over a total period of five years beginning from July, 2006 to June, 2011.We find that in Indian stock market, security returns do exhibit predictable patterns following extreme daily price shocks. They exhibit a reversal in their direction during few days subsequent to an event of extreme rise insecurity's daily closing prices. Conversely, after experiencing an extreme decline in their daily closing prices, they continue to follow the downward journey recording lower prices on few days subsequent to the day of extreme price decline. Evidence from non-overlapping test period days also indicates overreaction for the winner portfolio and under reaction for the loser portfolio. These findings indicate that investors in the Indian Stock Market are overoptimistic. When re-pricing stocks in response to new information, their immediate reaction causes the stock prices to be above their adjusted expected values.

Overreaction Effect can be traced back to 1980's when DeBondt and Thaler (1986) argued that there existed a strong tendency for both low and high performing securities in one period to experience reversal in following years. Since then it has become one of the grey areas in finance and lead to an on-going debate on its existence. The current paper critically evaluates the work of various authors discussing the possible causes of the effect and its behavioural aspects.

Global integration, the widening and intensifying of links between high-income and developing countries has accelerated over the years. Over the past few years, the financial markets have become increasingly global. The Indian market has gained from foreign inflows through the investment of Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs). Following the implementation of reforms in the securities industry in the past few years, Indian stock markets have stood out in the world ranking. During the past few years India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing economies. The increasing interest of foreign players in the domestic broking industry is a testimony of the stock market’s growth. The Indian stock market has also received a thrust from rise in business transactions over the years, because of sharp drop in brokerage fees and transaction costs, launch of a slew of new products, and a robust regulatory environment. The importance of institutional investors’ particularly foreign investors is very much evident as one of the routine reasons offered by market analysts’ whenever the market rises, it is attributed to foreign investors' money and no wonder we see headlines like "FIIs Fuel Rally" etc., in the business press. This is not unusual with India alone as today’s most developed economies might have seen a similar trend in the past. Domestic institutional investors on the other hand being another important section of institutional investors are playing a vital role in the Indian stock market. These investors have emerged as important players in the Indian stock market and their activities are influencing the market. There are many instances where this section of investors has stabilized the market conditions on one hand whereas their moves took the market to destabilized position on the other hand. Therefore, both FIIs and DIIs have become the most important determinants in the functioning of the Indian stock market. Thus, increasing role of these institutional investors has brought both quantitative and qualitative developments in the stock market viz., expansion of securities business, increased depth and breadth of the market, and above all their dominant investment philosophy of emphasizing the fundamentals has rendered efficient pricing of the stocks. Hence, there is a need to examine how investments made by these two groups of institutional investors’ impact each other as well as stock market returns. This book is an attempt in that direction.