Equity Market Prediction. Evidence from the United Kingdom

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 1,0, Technical University of Munich, language: English, abstract: This thesis delivers a comprehensive study on the empirical performance of the market returns on the UK equity market. It particularly focuses on the aggregate market indices to gain a complete look at the UK market. Different economic variables, such as fundamental stock characteristics, business cycle variables, the sentiment variable, and macroeconomic indicators, are investigated to determine their impact on the equity market return.

The initial data set analysed covers the period from January 1990 to September 2020. During this sample period, several significant economic and political events occurred. One notable event is the severe economic downturn in the UK induced by the 2008 global financial crisis, from which it took years for the economy to recover. However, the British exit from the European Union (Brexit), triggered by a nationwide referendum in 2016, brought economic uncertainties back.

Since early 2020, countries worldwide have suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global economy has faced a serious challenge. The lockdown and other restrictions made to tackle the pandemic have caused a significant slump in economic output, especially in the UK, as its economy depends mainly on services industries.

Accordingly, all these events have had a significant negative impact on the UK equity markets. In order to make more robust inferences about the predictive ability of various economic variables, two forecast periods are considered instead of one. One forecast period covers the period from January 2001 to September 2020, and the other covers the more recent ten years from January 2011 to September 2020.