IMPACT OF MACROECONOMIC VARIABLES ON STOCK RETURNS IN NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
The study examined the impact of Macroeconomic variables on Stock returns in the Nigerian capital market. The study used time series data spanning a period from 2000 to 2012 and the domestic variables employed were Money supply, Exchange rate, Nigeria treasury bills rate, inflation rate, and US Stock price as a proxy for international influence on stock returns in Nigeria. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Philip-Perron tests were used to determine the stochastic properties of the series. Within the theoretical framework of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory, a stationary VAR model was estimated and used to analyze the short run impact of selected macroeconomic variables using data for the period. The results show that there was marginal influence of the domestic variables. Changes in the US Stock prices have a positive and quantitatively larger effect on stock returns. In addition, the effect of changes in the exchange rate contributes a high of 5.6 percent change in stock return which is larger than that of all the other domestic variables. This implies that the Nigerian stock market is prone to the well-known contagion effect of global financial market. The study recommends that monetary authorities should be careful with the current efforts at internationalisation of the Nigerian Stock Market
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