The return determinants of these stocks, the volatility in them and volatility spillover are interesting topics to study. Keeping these things in mind, the first paper, “A Study of the Movement of Interest Rates and Spillover of Volatility and Returns Amongst the Leading Bank Stocks in India”, by Rakesh Shahani and Nikhil Nagpal, empirically investigates the impact of interest rates and foreign exchange rates on the movement of banking stocks in India. Using the weekly data of returns for the period April 2013-March 2018, the authors check for stationarity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, volatility and volatility spillover. As per the results, the returns are found to be stationary. Bank Nifty, which is a sectoral index, is found to be an important variable which determines return, whereas the impact of interest rate is muted. Evidences of volatility persistence and spillover are reported in the study.

To test the efficiency of stock market, researchers have used testing for return generation patterns. If there is a pattern, it helps investors and portfolio managers to devise trading strategies and defy market efficiency. To find the pattern within the week, the second paper, “Calendar Anomalies in Indian Stock Market: An Empirical Analysis”, by Nisha Jindal, uses data from January 2008 to December 2018, and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) models. The study reports the presence of seasonality. Friday’s returns are found to be higher as compared to other days.

Financial liberalization acted as equalizer and has reduced the gender disparity. Women now are taking part in stock market investments. Because of the inherent responsible and caring nature, women tend to be more risk-averse compared to men and hence their investment behavior must be different from that of men. Keeping these things in view, the third paper, “Factors Influencing the Investment Behavior of Women Investors: An Empirical Investigation”, by Sanjeet Kumar and Prashant Kumar, attempts to find the factors influencing the decision of women investors in selecting various investment avenues. Using survey data of 400 women investors and based on factor analysis, the study identifies seven factors influencing the decision of women investors. The factors identified can be categorized as sociocultural factors, personal factors, market-related factors, economic factors, investment-specific factors, firm-related factors and accounting information.

The fourth paper, “Forecasting and Modeling of Indian Private Banks’ Stocks: An Econometric Analysis for Prudent Investment for Investors and Traders”, by Gunjit Kaur, reports the interplay of the risk and return using data for private sector bank stocks. The paper uses different time horizon of daily and monthly returns for studying the risk and return characteristics of the chosen stocks. The differentiated time periods represent the holding period of traders and investors in the market. Monthly returns and risk go hand in hand and are higher than daily returns. For monthly returns, volatilities are not interrelated, whereas they are related for daily returns.

The last paper, “Perception of Investors and Financial Experts Regarding the Impact of Fluctuations in Exchange Rate on Share Price”, by Roshan Kumar, uses primary data of investor and financial experts’ perception for identifying the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on share price. Macroeconomic variables like inflation, crude oil price, gold price and exchange rate determine the share price and hence should be considered before investment decision making.