The Anomaly of 28 Days Between the Ex-Dividend and Payment Dates in Taiwanese Stock Markets

Jen-Chang Liu, Mark Yeats
2015 Asian Economic and Financial Review  
After 16 years of suspension during the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple now pays cash dividends. Since the death of Jobs, Apple has distributed twelve quarterly dividends. Of these, cash was paid 7 days after the ex-dividend date on ten occasions, and twice after 8 days. It has been well documented that individuals prefer numbers with salient final digits, such as 0 and 5, when making quantitative decisions. These phenomena motivates us to examine if 7 is a salient number (in other words, a
more » ... ly cycle effect is at work) in determining the period between the ex-dividend and payment dates. Since Taiwanese firms pay annual dividends, we conjecture that in Taiwan a period of 28 days is the most common period chosen for annual dividend distribution. This conjecture is verified and we provide evidence that the period decision is mainly affected by weekly cycle effect, and liquidity discretion. The periods are clustering around multiples of 7 from 21 to 49 days. We advance that the cycle of weekdays governs our daily life, just as two hands and ten fingers characterize our human body. Subsequently, we propose a behavioral and heuristic argument to explain why market participants are prone to number with final digits of 0, 5, and even numbers when making quantitative decisions. This paper shows that decision makers tend to link Fridays to the final transfer date of shares and choose time spans that follow 7-day patterns, corresponding to the weekly cycle. We hope to liberate firms from the anchoring effect imposed by the weekday framework and weekly cycles, to allow for more efficient an d rational decisions by both firms and shareholders.
doi:10.18488/journal.aefr/2015.5.9/102.9.1091.1118 fatcat:cvf4wbrfmzanxmmmeof36pxioy