Explanation

The Spearman rank correlation coefficient measures the strength and direction of the monotonic relationship between two variables using their ranked values.

Key characteristics of Spearman correlation:

• Ranges from -1 to +1
• +1 indicates perfect positive monotonic relationship
• -1 indicates perfect negative monotonic relationship
• 0 indicates no monotonic relationship
• Based on ranks rather than raw values
• Less sensitive to outliers than Pearson correlation

Interpretation of values:

• 0.7 to 1.0: Strong positive correlation
• 0.3 to 0.7: Moderate positive correlation
• 0 to 0.3: Weak positive correlation
• -0.3 to 0: Weak negative correlation
• -0.7 to -0.3: Moderate negative correlation
• -1.0 to -0.7: Strong negative correlation

Since the question doesn't provide the actual data to calculate the coefficient, and given the options range from -0.7 to 0.7, option C (0.3) represents a moderate positive correlation between the stock returns of X and Y.