ABSTRACT
This paper features an analysis of cryptocurrencies and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their effectiveness as a portfolio diversification tool and explores the correlations between the continuously compounded returns on Bitcoin, Ethereum and the S&P500 Index using a variety of parametric and non-parametric techniques. These methods include linear standard metrics such as the application of ordinary least squares regression (OLS) and the Pearson, Spearman and Kendall’s tau measures of association. In addition, non-linear, non-parametric measures such as the Generalised Measure of Correlation (GMC) and non-parametric copula estimates are applied. The results across this range of measures are consistent. The metrics suggest that, whilst the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic does not appear to have increased the correlations between the cryptocurrency series, it appears to have increased the correlations between the returns on cryptocurrencies and those on the S&P500 Index. This suggests that investments in cryptocurrencies are not likely to offer key diversification strategies in times of crisis, on the basis of evidence provided by this crisis.
ABSTRACT
The paper features an analysis of former President Trump's early tweets on COVID-19 in the context of Dr. Fauci's recently revealed email trove. The tweets are analysed using various data mining techniques, including sentiment analysis. These techniques facilitate exploration of content and sentiments within the texts, and their potential implications for the national and international reaction to COVID-19. The data set or corpus includes 159 tweets on COVID-19 that are sourced from the Trump Twitter Archive, running from 24 January 2020 to 2 April 2020. In addition we use Zipf and Mandelbrot's power law to calibrate the extent to which they differ from normal language patterns. A context for the emails is provided by the recently revealed email trove of Dr. Fauci, obtained by Buzzfeed on 1 June 2021 obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
ABSTRACT
The paper features an examination of the link between the behaviour of the FTSE 100 and S&P500 Indexes in both an autoregressive distributed lag ARDL, plus a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag NARDL framework. The attraction of NARDL is that it represents the simplest method available of modelling combined short- and long-run asymmetries. The bounds testing framework adopted means that it can be applied to stationary and non-stationary time series vectors, or combinations of both. The data comprise a daily FTSE adjusted price series, commencing in April 2009 and terminating in March 2021, and a corresponding daily S&P500 Index adjusted-price series obtained from Yahoo Finance. The data period includes all the gyrations caused by the Brexit vote in the UK, beginning with the vote to leave in 2016 and culminating in the actual agreement to withdraw in January 2020. It was then followed by the impact of the global spread of COVID-19 from the beginning of 2020. The results of the analysis suggest that movements in the contemporaneous levels of daily S&P500 Index levels have very significant effects on the behaviour of the levels of the daily FTSE 100 Index. They also suggest that negative movements have larger impacts than do positive movements in S&P500 levels, and that long-term multiplier impacts take about 10 days to take effect. These effects are supported by the results of quantile regression analysis. A key result is that weak form market efficiency does not apply in the second period.