COVID-19 pandemic and herd behavior: Evidence from a frontier market☆

This paper examines the presence of herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market using the cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) method and by applying quantile regression (QR). We detect herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market from January 2016 to May 2022. Herd behavior is less pronounced for bullish markets, yet more prominent under other market conditions. Importantly, the paper provides insight into the herd phenomenon during COVID-19's fourth wave outbreak in Vietnam. We discover that during the fourth wave outbreak investors on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) do not engage in herding. However, herd behavior does manifest on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) with falling stock prices engender pessimistic herd selling. Knowledge of this empirical evidence of herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market should prove useful to investors in determining the intrinsic value of stocks, and to policymakers wishing to enhance the efficiency of the equity market.

COVID-19 pandemic and herd behavior: Evidence from a frontier market.

This paper examines the presence of herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market using the cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) method and by applying quantile regression (QR). We detect herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market from January 2016 to May 2022. Herd behavior is less pronounced for bullish markets, yet more prominent under other market conditions. Importantly, the paper provides insight into the herd phenomenon during COVID-19's fourth wave outbreak in Vietnam. We discover that during the fourth wave outbreak, investors on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) do not engage in herding. However, herd behavior does manifest on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) with falling stock prices engendering pessimistic herd selling. Knowledge of this empirical evidence of herd behavior in the Vietnamese stock market should prove useful to investors in determining the intrinsic value of stocks, and to policymakers wishing to enhance the efficiency of the equity market.

Response of stock market volatility to COVID-19 announcements and stringency measures: A comparison of developed and emerging markets

We investigate the relationship between the daily release of COVID-19 related announcements, defensive government interventions, and stock market volatility, drawing upon an extended time period of one year, to independently test, confirm and iteratively improve on previous research findings. We categorize stock markets into emerging and developed markets and consider differences and similarities utilizing an asymmetric measure of volatility. We find that there are major differences between these markets with respect to investors’ interpretation of risk in response to daily new confirmed cases, death rates, recovery rates, and different defensive government interventions. We suggest explanations for these differences, in terms of national culture, and the quality of governance. Moreover, the development of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine is of immense importance to both markets. The findings have implications for tailoring government responses to crises in country-specific contexts.

Abnormal volatility in seasoned equity offerings during economic disruptions

Australia has become one of most prolific issuers of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) globally. Due to its convenience, firms issue SEOs as their primary capital raising mechanism particularly during economic disruptions i.e., the early 2000s dot-com bubble, 2008 Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19. Using an event study for ASX 200 firms from 1998 to 2020, we show that there is an increased intensity of SEO abnormal return volatility and volume during economic disruptions. We find evidence of abnormal return volatility and volume in standalone and restricted SEOs being higher relative to combined SEOs. We also identify that higher performing sectors experience larger abnormal return volatility and volume. Finally, using an improved measure of abnormal return volatility, we capture the time varying nature of volatility using GARCH and GJR-GARCH estimations. We highlight that the traditional abnormal return volatility measure tends to be overstated for some SEO types and understated for others.

The Australian Stock Market’s Reaction to the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Black Summer Bushfires: A Sectoral Analysis

In this study, we investigated the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on various sectors of the Australian stock market. Market capitalization and equally weighted indices were formed for eleven Australian sectors to examine the influence of the pandemic on them. First, we examined the financial contagion between the Chinese stock market and Australian sector indices through the dynamic conditional correlation fractionally integrated generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (DCC-FIGARCH) model. We found high time-varying correlations between the Chinese stock market and most of the Australian sector indices, with the financial, health care, information technology, and utility sectors displaying a decrease in co-movements during the pandemic. The Modified Iterative Cumulative Sum of Squares (MICSS) analysis results indicated the presence of structural breaks in the volatilities of most of the sector indices around the end of February 2020, but consumer staples, industry, information technology and real estate indices did not display any break. Markov regime-switching regression analysis depicted that the pandemic has mainly affected three sectors: consumer staples, industry, and real estate. When we considered the firm size, we found that smaller companies in the energy sector exhibited gradual deterioration, whereas small firms in the consumer staples sector experienced the largest positive impact from the pandemic.