The impact of COVID-19 induced panic on stock market returns: A two-year experience.

This paper explores the relationship between the stock markets of emerging and developed economies and the fear triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in a period that spans from mid-January 2020 to mid-February 2022. The potential relations are analyzed in terms of Granger causality and dynamic correlation, both from the view of raw undecomposed returns and different time-frequency decompositions derived from a previous wavelet transform screening approach. Overall, our Granger and dynamic correlation results suggest that changes in panic indexes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic do not have a significant relation with the raw stock market returns, but the reverse occurs in terms of time-frequency decompositions. Correlation analysis also indicates that all countries have a quite similar pattern of phase transitions, with certain stages preceded by a hump and others by a valley, i.e., they exhibit both positive and negative correlations. Despite a gradual reduction in media coverage, both causal relationships and correlations between financial markets and panic indexes held in 2021 and early 2022.

The impact of Covid-19 on commodity markets volatility: Analyzing time-frequency relations between commodity prices and coronavirus panic levels.

We apply wavelet analyses to study how the Covid pandemic influenced the volatility of commodity prices, covering various classes of commodities. We document the intervals of low, medium, and high coherence between the coronavirus panic index and the moves of the commodity prices. The low coherence intervals indicate the diversification potential of commodity investments during a systemic pandemic such as Covid-19. We document differences in the observed patterns per commodity category and evidence their potential role for designing cross-assets hedge strategies based on investments in commodities.

The impact of COVID-19 news, panic and media coverage on the oil and gold prices: An ARDL approach.

This study investigates whether COVID-19 news, panic and media coverage affect oil and gold prices. Using the ARDL approach over the period January 23, 2020 to June 23, 2020, we find that COVID-19 deaths and panic have negative effects on crude oil price. However, the propaganda created by the media in the long term has a negative impact on oil price. The empirical results show that the COVID-19 new infections, deaths and media coverage have positive effects on the gold price. Our findings prove that oil price is sensitive to bad news unlike gold price. According to our study, gold, which is a hedge against economic and geopolitical crises, is additionally a safe haven during COVID-19 health crisis. Overall, our results also demonstrate that the economic and financial uncertainty affect oil and gold prices negatively during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude that the impact of the COVID-19 new infections on oil and gold prices is depending on whether the disease is an epidemic or a pandemic.