Asymmetric impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on foreign exchange markets: Evidence from an extreme quantile approach

This study analyzes asymmetric transmission from the COVID-19 pandemic to major foreign exchange markets from 2 January 2020 to 2 June 2022. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating how the impact of COVID-19 on currency markets co-moves across market conditions and investment horizons. The article uses the recently developed cross-quantilogram framework to achieve this, which quantifies the cross-quantile dependency across time series without any moment condition requirement. The findings demonstrate that changes in the total daily global confirmed cases of COVID-19 can forecast changes in the currency markets under all market circumstances. These findings have significant implications for global investors and policymakers. © 2023, Oviedo University Press. All rights reserved.

Frequency connectedness and cross-quantile dependence among medicare, medicine prices and health-tech equity

We investigate the dynamic connectedness among health-tech equity and medicine prices (producer and consumer) and Medicare cost indices for the US market. In doing so, we apply Cross-Quantilogram Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) approaches to analyse historical high-frequency time-series data. TVP-VAR results show that health-tech equity is the highest volatility transmitter while Medicare price is the highest volatility receiver. We also find medicine producer price is the net volatility contributor while the retail price of medicine is the net volatility receiver. The Cross-Quantilogram analysis confirms a strong bivariate quantile dependence between respective markets at a higher quantile of each market. Cross-quantilogram demonstrates a higher level of connectedness among the markets when considering medium and long memory. We observe health-tech equity turned to be a profound volatility contributor, while medicine price (both producer and retail prices) and Medicare appeared to net volatility receiver during the time of COVID19 Pandemic. The financial performance of health-tech equity returns elevates the price volatility of medicine and eventually Medicare cost, which imply that equity return should be incorporated forming medicine prices. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Hedge and safe haven role of commodities for the US and Chinese equity markets

We examine the hedge and safe-haven properties of four commodity classes (precious metals, energy, agriculture and livestock) for the overall and sectoral equity markets of the US and China. In doing so, we employ two quantiles-based approaches, quantile regression and cross-quantilogram, using daily data from 25 September 2014 to 06 July 2020. The hedging effectiveness (HE) and time-varying conditional diversification benefits (CDB) are estimated. Our findings indicate that precious metals and agricultural commodities are weak safe havens for all equity sectors of China and the United States. In contrast, energy and livestock commodities are weak safe havens only for the information technology and healthcare sectors. Precious metals show better HE, whereas all commodities offer strong CDB. Our findings may be helpful for sectoral investors offsetting equity losses by investing in various commodity classes. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

What effects will Covid-19 have on the G7 stock markets? New evidence from a cross-quantilogram approach

With several commodity and financial markets allegedly performing poorly during the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, the objective of this study is to examine how the pandemic has affected stock markets in the G7 economies. The study applies the recently developed cross-quantilogram model introduced by Han et al. (2016) to investigate quantile dependence between the conditional stock return distributions of G7 countries and the total daily global confirmed Covid-19 cases across investment horizons. The results reveal that the cross-quantile dependence between the confirmed Covid-19 cases and G7 stock returns is most significant in the short and medium term. The interlinkage weakens as the lag period lengthens. These findings imply that, in the short and medium term, stock markets in the G7 countries reacted negatively and disproportionately to the increase in the number of daily verified Covid-19 cases. Besides, cross-quantile correlations calculated from recursive subsamples indicate that they change over time, especially in low and medium quantiles, suggesting that they are prone to jumps and discontinuities in the dependence structures. The findings can aid investors and policymakers in better understanding stock market dynamics, particularly during times of great stress and unknown events.

Dynamic Connectedness among Vaccine Companies’ Stock Prices: Before and after Vaccines Released

This study investigates the interconnectedness among the stocks of the publicly listed vaccine-producing companies before and after vaccine releases in 2020/21. In doing so, the study utilizes the daily frequency equity returns of the major vaccine producers, including Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca. First, the investigation applies the TVP-VAR Dynamic Connectedness approach to explore the time–frequency connectedness between the stocks of those vaccine producers. The empirical findings demonstrate that Moderna performs as the most prominent net volatility contributor, whereas Sinopharm is the highest net volatility receiver. Interestingly, the vaccine release significantly increases the stock market connectedness among our sampled vaccine companies. Second, the cross-quantile dependency framework allows for the observation of the interconnectedness under the bearish and bullish stock market conditions by splitting any paired variables into 19 quantiles when considering short-, medium- and long-memories. The results also show that a high level of connectivity among the vaccine producers exists under bullish stock market conditions. Notably, Moderna transmits significant volatility spillovers to Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca under both the bearish and bullish conditions, though the volatility transmission from Moderna to Pfizer is less pronounced. The policy implication proposes that the vaccine release allows companies to increase their stock returns and induce substantial volatility spillovers from company to company.

Tail risk dependence, co-movement and predictability between green bond and green stocks

This paper examines the coherence of extreme returns between green bonds and a unique set of green stocks. We use the novel quantile cross-spectral coherence methodology of quantile spectral coherency model, cross-quantilogram correlation approach, windowed time-lagged cross-correlation, and windowed scalogram difference models as estimation techniques. The study period spans from 28 November 2008 to 23 September 2020. Our measure of green stocks comprises the constituents of the MSCI Global Environment Price Index: Alternative Energy, Green Building, Pollution Prevention or Clean Technology while our green bond market is proxied by S&P Green Bond Index. We find the dependency between Green Bonds and green stocks to be weak, and this is high during market downturn periods in the short- to medium-term dynamics. This suggests that Green Bonds do act as a hedge, diversifier, or safe-haven instrument for environment portfolio in the short-term, medium-term and long-term dynamics during bearish market conditions. We conclude that green bonds and green stocks are two distinct asset classes with a distinct risk-return profile despite their common climate-friendly nature.

Diversifier or more? Hedge and safe haven properties of green bonds during COVID-19.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study explores the hedging and safe-haven potential of green bonds for conventional equity, fixed income, commodity, and forex investments. We employ the cross-quantilogram approach to understand better the dynamic relationship between two assets under different market conditions. Our full sample results reveal that the green bond index could serve as a diversifier asset for medium- and long-term equity investors. Besides, it can serve as a hedging and safe-haven instrument for currency and commodity investments. Moreover, the sub-sample analysis of the pandemic period shows a heightened short- and medium-term lead-lag association between the green bond index and conventional investment returns. However, the green bond index emerges as a significant hedging and safe-haven asset for long-term investors of conventional financial assets. Our findings offer valuable insights for long-term investors when their portfolios are comprised of conventional assets such as equities, commodities, forex, and fixed income securities. Further, our findings reveal the potential role of green bond investments in global financial recovery efforts without compromising the low-carbon transition targets.

Frequency connectedness and cross-quantile dependence among medicare, medicine prices and health-tech equity

We investigate the dynamic connectedness among health-tech equity and medicine prices (producer and consumer) and Medicare cost indices for the US market. In doing so, we apply Cross-Quantilogram Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) approaches to analyse historical high-frequency time-series data. TVP-VAR results show that health-tech equity is the highest volatility transmitter while Medicare price is the highest volatility receiver. We also find medicine producer price is the net volatility contributor while the retail price of medicine is the net volatility receiver. The Cross-Quantilogram analysis confirms a strong bivariate quantile dependence between respective markets at a higher quantile of each market. Cross-quantilogram demonstrates a higher level of connectedness among the markets when considering medium and long memory. We observe health-tech equity turned to be a profound volatility contributor, while medicine price (both producer and retail prices) and Medicare appeared to net volatility receiver during the time of COVID19 Pandemic. The financial performance of health-tech equity returns elevates the price volatility of medicine and eventually Medicare cost, which imply that equity return should be incorporated forming medicine prices.