Investment Management and Financial Innovations

Stock markets over the world have become more interconnected due to activities of foreign investors in search for alternative financial assets and markets to invest in order to diversify their portfolio.Stock market indices and index returns have been known to reflect linkages between different markets.This study assesses the extent of correlation of stock market index returns in West Africa and those of the United States of America (US) and United Kingdom (UK) from 2008 to 2016.The correlation between the index returns for the entire sample period and yearly samples were considered for Nigeria, Ghana, the BRVM, the USA and the UK.The indices selected for the five countries considered are the Nigerian…