Research background: The current changes in the global stock markets are related to the next wave of the industrial revolution ?Industry 4.0?. It is expected that the Industry 4.0 will lead to an acceleration of the innovation process and growth of volumes of tailor-made products. The stock markets started to react to the upcoming technological changes over the last decade, which are reflected by the changes in the composition of the major stock indices where the technological sector started to grow in importance. But innovations are not only connected with the specialized technological sector, but they are also of direct concern to the whole spectrum of economic entities. Besides the private investments that are usually allocated via the stock market, also the public sector investments play an important role. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between government expenditures on research and development (R&D) and stock markets (and GDP) in the US and in Germany. Methods: We use the tools of descriptive analysis as well as correlation and regression methods of estimation. Findings & Value added: Our research confirms that the collection of data on R&D on annual basis for Germany and the US is insufficient for analytical and systemic management purposes. The real effects of investments in the R&D are time lagged. The regression analysis of annual data confirms only the statistical importance of patent applications as well as interest rate and stock index as independent variables in explanation of variability of real economy growth during the 1985?2017 period. Our model did not prove the significance of government expenditures. We can explain it, among others, by the fact that governments do not pay sufficient attention to the challenges yet, which are associated with the Industry 4.0, especially in the US, where the government expenditures in R&D gradually decrease. The governments in both economies try to increase their support, but fiscal sustainability is a limiting factor.

The Turn of the month effect is one of the better-known calendar anomalies. If a stock market is affected by the Turn of the month effect, it records significantly higher returns during a relatively short time period around the end of the old month and the beginning of the new one, than during the remainder of the month. This paper investigates the presence of the Turn of the month effect in the stock markets of 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. We focused not only on the anomaly in returns, but also on the anomaly in price volatility. The results show that, during a 20-year period (1999–2018), a statistically significant Turn of the month effect was present in the stock markets of seven out of 11 investigated countries. However, the anomaly affected only the stock market returns, not price volatility.

The Halloween effect is one of the most famous calendar anomalies. It is based on the observation that stock returns tend to perform much better over the winter half of the year (November-April) than over the summer half of the year (May-October). The vast majority of studies that investigated the Halloween effect over the recent decades focused only on stock indices. This means that they evaluated whether a stock index follows the Halloween effect pattern, but they omitted digging a little deeper and analyze the Halloween effect on the individual stocks level. This paper investigates to what extent the blue-chips stocks included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are affected by the Halloween effect and whether the Halloween effect is widespread or the behavior of the whole index is driven by only a handful of stocks that are strongly affected by the Halloween effect. The results show that, although the strength of the Halloween effect varies quite rapidly from stock to stock, the vast majority of analyzed stocks experienced a notably higher average winter period than summer period returns over the 1980-2017 period. Moreover, in 18 out of 35 cases, the Halloween effect was statistically significant.

The Halloween effect is one of the best known share market calendar anomalies. It is based on the phenomenon when the summer period (May -October) returns tend to be lower compared to the winter period (November -April) returns. This paper investigates the presence of the Halloween effect on share markets of 12 CEE countries. The results show that although the Halloween effect pattern can be found in the majority of the CEE share markets, it is statistically significant only in the case of Poland and Ukraine. The data also show that the Halloween effect tends to be stronger on mature share markets of Germany and the USA than on the CEE share markets as a group, however there can be found some exceptions, such as the Ukrainian, Russian and Estonian share markets. In most of the cases, the Halloween effect grew stronger after the global financial crisis of 2008 although there are some exceptions such as the Lithuanian and Russian share markets.

Th e fi nancial markets are impacted by various seasonal anomalies. One of the best known of them is the Halloween eff ect. Th e Halloween eff ect means that the summer period (May-October) asset returns are lower compared to the winter period (November-April) asset returns. In the paper, price series of 20 major agricultural commodities over the 1980-2015-time period are tested for the presence of the Halloween eff ect. Th e data show that 15 out of the 20 commodities recorded a higher average winter period than summer period returns and in 10 cases, the diff erences are statistically signifi cant. Th e data also show that out of the 5 commodities with higher summer period returns, only in the case of poultry the diff erences are statistically signifi cant.

The Halloween effect is one of the best known share market calendar anomalies. It is based on the phenomenon when the summer period (May -October) returns tend to be lower compared to the winter period (November -April) returns. This paper investigates the presence of the Halloween effect on share markets of 12 CEE countries. The results show that although the Halloween effect pattern can be found in the majority of the CEE share markets, it is statistically significant only in the case of Poland and Ukraine. The data also show that the Halloween effect tends to be stronger on mature share markets of Germany and the USA than on the CEE share markets as a group, however there can be found some exceptions, such as the Ukrainian, Russian and Estonian share markets. In most of the cases, the Halloween effect grew stronger after the global financial crisis of 2008 although there are some exceptions such as the Lithuanian and Russian share markets. JEL classification:G01, G14, G15

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ABSTRACT. The problematics of long term investing is in the centre of attention of many academicians as well as financial professionals. The population in developed and also in emerging countries is aging and the traditional pension schemes start to experience serious problems. One of the solutions is to establish capitalisation pillars of pension systems. The capitalisation pillars are based on long term investing in stocks, bonds and other securities. Therefore it is important to identify efficient long term investment strategies. This paper compares long term regular investing in conservative instruments of money market (t-bills, deposit accounts, etc.) and indexing (investing in portfolio of stocks that tracks a benchmark stock index) in the USA, Japan and Germany over the 1985-2014 time period. The results show that regular investing leads to the cost averaging effect that proves to eliminate the impacts of market turbulences significantly in the long term. The results also show that indexing is superior to conservative investments in the long term, although in Japan the results were slightly in the favour of conservative investments during the 1985-2014 time period.