Moon phases effect in the time of increased volatility in financial markets

The main objective of this study is to verify the occurrence of the moon phases effect among market indexes listed on the stock exchanges of CEE countries in the years 2020-2024 (period of increased market uncertainty). Based on the daily quotations of selected indexes, daily logarithmic returns were calculated on new moon and full moon days. Regarding the Wilcoxon signed-rank W test statistic, a significantly higher than zero median value was indicated for the entire research sample recorded on the new moon day (especially in the case of the Polish WIG and the Romanian BET). Notably, no significantly different of returns were recorded on the full moon day. The conclusions drawn from this study may constitute information for financial market researchers and investors investing in global markets, who may formulate investment strategies based on the conclusions drawn from the study. It is worth emphasising that the presented studies constitute one of the first attempts to verify the effect of the moon phases in a time of increased volatility of prices of financial instruments occurring in global markets, which is the research gap of this study.