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The research question of which firm-level factors make firms more vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuations during periods of crisis has rarely been explored by prior literature. Using a large sample of 1577 firms from 9 developed and 11 emerging countries, this study presents a comprehensive analysis of how firm-level factors affect firms' foreign exchange exposure before and during the COVID-19 crisis. The results provide evidence of a substantial increase in firms' linear exposure during the COVID-19 period. The cross-sectional analysis reveals that the effects of firm-level variables on exposure are more pronounced during crisis periods and are different from non-crisis periods. Firms that have effective asset utilization or large operating profit margins remain less exposed during times of stress. Contrary to hedging theory, firms that have high incentives to hedge such as firms with high financial leverage become highly exposed to currency fluctuations during crisis periods. The interaction analysis provides further evidence that firms with high leverage can limit their foreign exchange exposure during periods of crisis if they have high asset turnover or high operating profits. The results offer important practical implications to firms for risk management during periods of crisis.
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PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to global economic policy uncertainty, which has increased the need to investigate ways to mitigate the uncertainty. This study aims to examine the potential of cryptocurrencies as a hedge and safe haven avenue against economic policy uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThis study investigates the behavior of the five leading cryptocurrencies in relation to country-level and group-level economic policy uncertainty indices, as measured by the text-based method developed by Baker et al. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016, 131, 1593-1636). The research covers a broad range of emerging and developed economies from July 2013 to September 2020. The study employs the approach of Narayan et al. (Economic Modelling, 2016, 53, 388-397) to examine the hedging and safe-haven properties of cryptocurrencies.FindingsThis study finds that the top cryptocurrencies play a hedging role against economic policy uncertainty, with some exceptions. Additionally, there is evidence to support the idea that cryptocurrencies can serve as a safe haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, investors may benefit from using cryptocurrencies as a risk-management avenue during times of uncertainty.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the existing literature by testing the cryptocurrencies' hedging and safe haven properties in a new way, by analyzing their lead and lag behaviors using a recent and innovative approach. Additionally, it examines a wide range of emerging and advanced markets, providing insight into the potential of using cryptocurrencies as a risk mitigation avenue.
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PurposeThis study aims to examine the ability of clean energy stocks to provide cover for investors against market risks related to climate change and disturbances in the oil market.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the feasible quasi generalized least squares technique to estimate a predictive model based on Westerlund and Narayan's (2015) approach to evaluating the hedging effectiveness of clean energy stocks. The out-of-sample forecast evaluations of the oil risk-based and climate risk-based clean energy predictive models are explored using Clark and West's model (2007) and a modified Diebold & Mariano forecast evaluation test for nested and non-nested models, respectively.FindingsThe study finds ample evidence that clean energy stocks may hedge against oil market risks. This result is robust to alternative measures of oil risk and holds when applied to data from the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, the hedging effectiveness of clean energy against climate risks is limited to 4 of the 6 clean energy indices and restricted to climate risk measured with climate policy uncertainty.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by providing extensive analysis of hedging effectiveness of several clean energy indices (global, the United States (US), Europe and Asia) and sectoral clean energy indices (solar and wind) against oil market and climate risks using various measures of oil risk (WTI (West Texas intermediate) and Brent volatility) and climate risk (climate policy uncertainty and energy and environmental regulation) as predictors. It also conducts forecast evaluations of the clean energy predictive models for nested and non-nested models.
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In this paper, we investigate whether investors can reap potential diversification or hedging benefits from holding green bonds in a portfolio containing a conventional financial asset during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from 6 November 2014 to 5 November 2020, we estimate corrected dynamic conditional correlation between between green bonds and four major asset classes: stocks, corporate bonds, commodities, and clean energy. We extend our analysis by using these correlations to examine hedging, optimal portfolio weights, and naïve strategies and evaluate their implications for investors by calculating hedging effectiveness and utility gain improvement. Results reveal that across the full sample, pre-COVID-19, and during-COVID-19 periods, optimal portfolio weights represent an ideal strategy to realize the greatest risk reduction and risk-adjusted return. Further, green bonds could add substantial diversification benefits for investors holding assets in clean energy, global stocks, and commodities.
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In this paper, we analyze the dynamic connectedness and asymmetric risk spillovers among China's green bonds, bonds, stock, and crude oil markets in terms of magnitude, direction, and patterns by utilizing the DCC-GARCH-t-Copula model. We then evaluate the hedging performance of China's green bonds and compare it before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our empirical results demonstrate that, on average, green bonds display significantly lower extreme risk and have weak connectedness with stock and crude oil markets. The spillover effect of green bonds and crude oil risk is particularly pronounced;however, there are weak green bonds-stock risk spillover effects. Subsequent to the COVID-19 outbreak, the green bonds market is more resilient to extreme bonds market declines and offer improved hedging potential for bonds.. Our findings furnish an up-to-date picture and invaluable information for the portfolio, risk management, and hedging strategies for pro-environmental investors in emerging green bonds markets.
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Documenting the interlinkages among assets that are widely used to hedge against inflation is crucial for investors, as the necessity to protect the investment portfolio is stronger under inflationary conditions. For this purpose, we investigate the volatility spillovers between treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) and a battery of other assets perceived as inflation hedges, including bonds, gold, real estate, oil and equities. The applied methodology comprehends the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) extension of the Diebold and Yilmaz (Int J Forecast 28:57–66, 2012, 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2011.02.006) approach for the period 1/1/2010–3/31/2022. Our results indicate that the assets under consideration are moderately interconnected and subjected to several exogenous shocks, such as the US–China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Furthermore, we assess the hedging effectiveness of TIPS against each asset by estimating hedge ratios and optimal portfolios weights, before and after the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, by using conditional variance estimations (DCC-GARCH). The empirical findings show that the short position in the volatility of TIPS is proved to be an excellent hedge for all the sampled assets, with the exception of short-term Treasury bonds, and their hedging ability was improved during COVID-19.
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As a precious metal and investment commodity, gold has been signified to be important for risk management, diversification, and hedging. The gold market has undergone considerable structural changes in the facet of the pandemic and other geopolitical developments, attracting the interest of investors. Thus, it is crucial to look into how these structural changes affect the efficiency of the market. Accordingly, the study examines and compares the evolution of the gold market efficiency in three major economies from January 1, 2018, to August 31, 2022: India, USA, and Brazil. For this, we first decompose the time series using Loess Smoother's Seasonal and Trend Decomposition and then employ a multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis approach. The estimates are strengthened by the alternative approach of the rolling window method of wild bootstrap automatic variance ratio. The findings indicate a considerable decline in the efficiency of the gold returns across three economies, with the highest decline in India, followed by USA and Brazil. Notably, during covid and post covid periods, India and USA show persistence in small fluctuations, while Brazil displays persistent behavior in large fluctuations. Thereby, the market panic makes the gold market unstable, and its use as a safe haven is "erratic”. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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Our research contributes a new point of view on China's rare earth dynamic risk spillover measurement;this was performed by combining complex network and multivariate nonlinear Granger causality to construct the time-varying connectedness complex network and analyze the formation mechanism using the impulse response. First, our empirical research found that for the dynamic characteristics of China's rare earth market, due to instability, uncertainty, and geopolitical decisions, disruption can be captured well by the TVP-VAR-SV model. Second, except for praseodymium, oxides are all risk takers and are more affected by the impact of other assets, which means that the composite index and catalysts are main sources of risk spillovers in China's rare earth trading complex network system. Third, from the perspective of macroeconomic variables, there are significant multivariate nonlinear impacts on the total connectedness index of China's rare earth market, and they exhibit asymmetric shock characteristics. These findings indicate that the overall linkage of the risk contagion in China's rare earth trading market is strong. Strengthening the interconnections among the rare earth assets is of important practical significance. Empirical results also provide policy recommendations for establishing trading risk protection measures under macro-prudential supervision. Especially for investors and regulators, rare earth oxides are important assets for risk mitigation. When rare earth systemic trading risk occur, the allocation of oxide rare earth assets can hedge part of the trading risk.
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Geopolitical uncertainty creates huge pressure on financial markets, forcing decision-makers and investors to analyze risks and manage their investment portfolios. Against this background, this study investigates the risk-hedging effects of Bitcoin and Gold in the stock markets of the G7 countries. The research focuses on the period from January 5, 2017 to June 30, 2022, covering a significant portion of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War. The study utilizes wavelet analysis to analyze the hedging effects in the time–frequency domain, allowing for a more in-depth analysis. The findings show that bitcoin provides stronger short-term risk hedging in the G7 stock markets compared to gold during the COVID-19 and Russo-Ukrainian War periods, making a valuable contribution to the limited existing literature on the topic. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index, Islamic gold-backed cryptocurrencies and halal chain in the presence of state (regime) dynamics.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have used the Markov-switching model to identify bull and bear market regimes. Moreover, the dynamic conditional correlation, the Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner- generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and the wavelet coherence models are applied to detect the presence of spillover and contagion effects.FindingsThe findings indicate various patterns of spillover between halal chain, Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index and Islamic gold-backed cryptocurrencies in high and low volatility regimes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the contagion dynamics depend on the bull or bear periods of markets.Practical implicationsThese present empirical findings are important for current and potential traders in gold-backed cryptocurrencies in that they facilitate a better understanding of this new type of assets. Indeed, halal chain is a safe haven asset that should be combined with Islamic gold-backed cryptocurrencies for better performance in portfolio optimization and hedging, mainly during the COVID-19 period.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first research on the impact of the halal chain on the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index return, Islamic gold-backed cryptocurrencies returns in the bear and bull markets around the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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PurposeThe purpose of this research is to analyze the Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) long memory and conditional volatility.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical approach includes ARFIMA-HYGARCH and ARFIMA-FIGARCH, both models under Student‘s t-distribution, during the period (ETH: November 9, 2017 to November 25, 2021 and BTC: September 17, 2014 to November 25, 2021).FindingsFindings suggest that ARFIMA-HYGARCH is the best model to analyze BTC volatility, and ARFIMA-FIGARCH is the best approach to model ETH volatility. Empirical evidence also confirms the existence of long memory on returns and on BTC volatility parameters. Results evidence that the models proposed are not as suitable for modeling ETH volatility as they are for the BTC.Originality/valueFindings allow to confirm the fractal market hypothesis in BTC market. The data confirm that, despite the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, the dynamics of BTC returns, and volatility maintained their patterns, i.e. the way in which they evolve, in relation to the prepandemic era, did not change, but it is rather reaffirmed. Yet, ETH conditional volatility was more affected, as it is apparently higher during Covid-19. The originality of the research lies in the focus of the analysis, the proposed methodology and the variables and periods of study.
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The global lockdowns including movement restrictions during COVID‐19 pandemic impacted the hospitality business negatively and by extension the trading of related stocks such as travel & tourism stocks. Owing to the long standing hedging potential of gold, we examine whether this potential can be extended to the travel & tourism stocks in order to hedge against the associated risks caused by the current pandemic. Using daily data from January 2016 to July 2020 and constructing optimal portfolio strategies, we find that gold serves as a very strong hedge and safe haven for travel & tourism stocks, most especially in the pandemic period. This conclusion validates the inclusion of gold in the diversified portfolio of travel & tourism stocks in order to improve the risk‐adjusted return performance for investors in the sector particularly during COVID‐19 pandemic.
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This study investigates the risk spillover effect between the exchange rate of importing and exporting oil countries and the oil price. The analysis is supported by the utilization of a set of double-long memories. Thereafter, a multivariate GARCH type model is adopted to analyze the dynamic conditional correlations. Moreover, the Gumbel copula is employed to define the nonlinear structure of dependence and to evaluate the optimal portfolio. The conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) is adopted as a risk measure. Findings indicate a long-run dependence and asymmetry of bidirectional risk spillover among oil price and exchange rate and confirm that the risk spillover intensity is different between the former and the latter. They show that the oil price has a stronger spillover effect in the case of oil exporting countries and the lowest spillover effect in the case of oil importing countries.
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Our investigation strives to unearth the best portfolio hedging strategy for the G7 stock indices through Bitcoin and gold using daily data relevant to the period 2 January 2016 to 5 January 2023. This study uses the DVECH-GARCH model to model dynamic correlation and then compute optimal hedge ratios and hedging effectiveness. The empirical findings show that Bitcoin and gold were rather effective hedge assets before COVID-19 and diversifiers during the pandemic and Russia–Ukraine war. From hedging effectiveness perspectives, gold and Bitcoin are safe-haven assets, and the investment risk of G7 stock indices could be hedged by taking a short position during thepandemic period and war except for the pair Nikkei/Gold. Additionally, gold beats Bitcoin in terms of hedging efficiency. We thus demonstrate the central role of Bitcoin and gold as financial market participants, particularly during market turmoil and downward movements. Our findings can be of interest to investors, regulators, and governments to take into consideration the role of Bitcoin in financial markets.
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Given that natural gas is a vital input for the U.S. utility sector, this study empirically investigates the return connectedness between the natural gas and utility stocks in the U.S. market. Using the quantile connectedness approach, we show that the nexus between natural gas and utility stocks is more pronounced at the tails compared to the central of the conditional distribution. The return connectedness indices are time-varying with a net receiver role of natural gas and driven by various macro-variables. Finally, our portfolio implication analyses with alternative tail risk measures suggest that it can be more beneficial for risk-adverse investors to allocate substantial weights into the electricity utility stocks in normal market conditions. However, during the COVID-19- induced recession, it is critical to shift more fund to the natural gas futures to reduce tail risks. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
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PurposeThe study aims to examine the relationship among economic policy uncertainty (EPU), geopolitical-risks (GPR), the interaction (EPGR) of EPU and GPR and the returns of gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium using monthly data from January (1997) to May (2021).Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs the Markov-switching and the novel Shi et al. (2020) bootstrap time-varying Granger-causality approach.FindingsThough the Markov-switching shows variation in the responses of precious metals to EPU, GPR and EPGR across low and high states, the paper observes the safe-haven potential of the precious metals in the high regime while the hedging potency is also evident in the results. To further substantiate the safe-haven and hedging properties, the time-varying Granger-causality shows the causal effect of EPU on all the selected precious metal returns coinciding with global events. While the authors show that GPR Granger causes platinum, palladium and rhodium consistently under the rolling/recursive-evolving tests, the authors cannot find the causal effect of GPR on gold and silver returns across the algorithms. The paper also observes persistence in the causal effect of EPGR on palladium and platinum across all the algorithms, while gold and rhodium only show consistency in the responses under the rolling- and recursive-evolving algorithms given the conditions of homoscedasticity and heteroscedasticity.Practical implicationsThe authors' results are essential to investors and policymakers since both typically leverage the hedging and safe-haven characteristics of precious metals to obviate downside risks during highly uncertain periods.Originality/valueThe authors' techniques allow examining the hedging and safe-haven properties of precious metals across regimes and date-stamp critical periods of causation inherent in the relationship.
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Unlike volatility, the skewness and kurtosis of asset returns are often neglected in the analysis of spillovers and risk management, although they capture the return asymmetry and fat-tailedness, respectively, arising from the non-normality of returns. In this paper, we provide evidence of the relevance and utility of considering spillovers in volatility and higher-order moments (skewness, and kurtosis) and co-moments (covariance, co-skewness, and co-kurtosis), and their implications for hedging. Using high-frequency data on the US stock, crude oil, and gold markets, a time-varying spillover approach and portfolio analysis, we reveal the following results. Firstly, besides volatility and covariance, co-skewness and co-kurtosis are relevant spillover transmitters across the stock, crude oil, and gold markets. Secondly, the level of total spillover increases when including not only covariance but also co-skewness and co-kurtosis, suggesting the relevance of considering higher order co-moments beyond volatility when studying spillovers. Thirdly, the inclusion of co-moments in the spillover analysis generates a significant improvement in hedging for all pairs, which is reflected in the significant increase in the utility function when co-skewness and co-kurtosis are considered. This result is noted when the COVID-19 sub-period is considered separately, except for oil‑gold. Overall, the findings matter for the system of interconnectivity across various assets and emphasize the implications and contributions of higher-order moments and co-moments to portfolio allocation and financial risk management. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
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PurposeEven though Bitcoin has been often labelled as a safe haven asset class in the literature, the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the diversifying opportunities offered by Bitcoin in relation to other assets needs to be investigated. This paper aims to investigate how the EPU affects diversification of commodity, conventional, Islamic and sustainable equity returns in relation to its impact on Bitcoin returns.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use advanced time-series econometrics, namely, multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic-dynamic conditional correlation and continuous wavelet transformation, for the analysis of the daily returns for the aforementioned assets between 01 August 2011 and 01 September 2019.FindingsFirst, the authors found a strong evidence of Bitcoin's mean reverting trend in the long run while its volatility has decreased significantly since 2013. After separating the EPU into two regimes (high and low), diversification opportunities with Bitcoin seems to disappear in a high EPU period, while the hedging opportunity tends to prevail in a low EPU period for all classes of assets. Importantly, the findings indicate that Bitcoin offers short-term diversification for sustainable and Islamic equity as well as energy stocks during a low uncertainty period. Consequently, in relation to the policy uncertainty, Bitcoin provides similar hedging opportunities than commodities like Gold and Silver. Overall, the study shows that EPU is remarkably important in explaining the average portfolio returns of Bitcoin, suggesting that this indicator can be perceived as a decent explanatory factor for portfolio diversification.Originality/valueThe study significantly extends the empirical literature of Bitcoin's portfolio diversification by taking EPU into consideration. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is one of the few studies to investigate the asymmetric effects of US EPU on Bitcoin's hedging capabilities by taking into account major conventional equity, sustainable equity, Islamic equity, gold, silver and oil.
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Islamic financial institutions have a significant role to play in the post-COVID world, as they have shielded market participants from a full-scale meltdown (Hassan et al., 2022, 2021;Naeem et al., 2021). [...]there is a pressing need to research the successful management of Islamic financial institutions and clarify what stakeholders can learn from them. Many international financial institutions and other multilateral organizations in Asia, especially small and medium organizations, are currently using Islamic Finance to promote economic development by encouraging individuals to participate in financial markets through Islamic saving and lending instruments (Abdul-Rahim et al., 2022), or on a macro level by providing Islamic approaches into the monetary system (Mojahedi Moakhar et al., 2022), or to simply hedge risk (Afzal et al., 2023;Yoon et al., 2022). [...]Islamic Finance has proven to be a dependable alternative to initial public offerings (Hanieh, 2023) and public–private partnership financing and entrepreneurship (Anggadwita et al., 2021), more specifically technological entrepreneurship (Motiei, 2022). [...]this study calculates the accuracy of the pre-IPO reports to be 61% and views the high precision as related to DDM. [...]Saeed Akbar and Shehzad Khan et al. evaluate capital construction determinants' impact on the influence levels of SC and non-compliant firms in Pakistan.
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This paper investigates alternatives to the conventional minimum-variance framework for hedging equity risks with crude oil. Specifically, the optimal hedge ratios are calculated for various risk objectives such as volatility, semivariance, and tail risk. The hedging efficacy is assessed for BRIC stocks and aggregated market indices. The results show that the optimal hedge ratios differ by strategy, and hedging efficacy varies across risk metrics, equity indices, and time periods. Semivariance and tail risk hedging are more effective than volatility risk hedging, but more expensive. Oil exporters (Brazil and Russia) outperform importers (India and China) in terms of hedging effectiveness. Hedging costs are lower during COVID-19 than during the global financial crisis. It is critical to capture volatility dynamics for hedging volatility, downside, and tail risk. Over-hedging could significantly increase the risk of an equity-oil-hedged portfolio. The findings contribute to a better understanding of oil's risk hedging capacity for equity indices, which will be of interest to financial market participants, corporations, and regulators. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd