Triggering of Herding Instincts due to COVID-19 Pandemic in Pakistan Stock Exchange

ABSTRACT

The present research intends to examine the herding aspect during the COVID-19 outbreak. The study is conducted to achieve specific objectives, so the underlying sampling technique is purposive sampling. The considered data source is the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). Daily stock prices of 528 listed companies in PSX have been taken from the official website of PSX from 1998 to 2021. The current study envisions investigating the herding aspects for pre-pandemic and the time covering the pandemic period. The study has also targeted ten sectors of PSX. The present study's motive is to investigate investors' herding prospects before and during the pandemic in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) and its selected sectors. Daily closing stock prices of listed companies have been collected from the official website of PSX to calculate the stock returns. The Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation (CSAD) has been used as a herding measure. Findings revealed that herding has not been observed in PSX during both time spans and even not during the bullish and bearish trends. However, robust sectoral evidence has been observed during the pandemic. It implies that investors in PSX tend to follow the crowd irrespective of making their own decisions to avoid further losses.