Market fear, investor mood, sentiment, economic uncertainty and tourism sector in the United States amid COVID-19 pandemic: A spillover analysis

The study investigates and confirms the spillover effects from investor fear, mood, sentiment and uncertainty to the US tourism sector returns. The findings indicate that market fear, investor mood and sentiment are net transmitter of shocks and economic uncertainty and the tourism sector is net receiver of shocks. We also provide evidence that media-hype, infodemic, media-coverage related to COVID-19 and infectious disease equity market volatility impacts the total and directional spillover of information from fear, mood, sentiment and uncertainty to the tourism sector.

Day-of-the-week effect: A sectoral analysis of Pakistan stock exchange

This study scrutinizes the day-of-the-week effect anomaly in the context of market and industry analysis of the Pakistan stock exchange. For this purpose, daily closing prices of KSE-100, KSE-30, and KSE-All Share Index from January 01, 2009 to December 31, 2018, have been used. Similarly, sector returns are also calculated, taking average log-returns of selected sample firms. To analyze the data ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, general generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) (1,1) as well as asymmetric threshold GARCH (TGARCH) and exponential GARCH (EGARCH) models have been employed to model the leverage effect of good and bad news on market volatility. The results indicate the evidence of daily seasonality, with significant Monday and Wednesday effect in PSX indices returns as well as in most of the industry returns. Monday is found to be the day with the highest average returns with the highest return volatility. The findings of the study reveal that there exists a weak form of inefficiency in the Pakistan Stock Market, which implies the possibility of earning abnormal returns by investors using timing strategies. In terms of return predictability, this study is essential for international and domestic investors and it may affect their investment strategy and return management. The results might be interesting to the financial experts as they ponder the available conditions in the capital market for financial decision-making. This study is one of its first kind that includes both indices as well as industry returns for analysis of manufacturing industries in Pakistan stock exchange.

Uncertainty and the Oracle of Market Returns: Evidence from Wavelet Coherence Analysis

Wavelet methodology is employed to investigate the statistical relationship between three well-accepted measures of uncertainty and both market and sector returns. Our primary goal is to determine whether uncertainty is sector specific. Although there are periods when the market works effectively as an oracle capturing uncertainty, we also find sector specific uncertainty. The wavelet equivalent of correlation, coherence, is used to determine the presence of sector specific uncertainty. We find that allowing localized information in the time frequency domain is critical for separating out sector specific uncertainty from market uncertainty.

An augmented macroeconomic linear factor model of South African industrial sector returns

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of the macroeconomic environment on South African industrial sector returns. Design/methodology/approach Using standardized coefficients derived from time-series factor models, the authors quantify the impact of macroeconomic influences on industrial sector returns. The authors analyze the structure of the resultant residual correlation matrices to establish the level of factor omission and apply a factor analytic augmentation to arrive at a specification that is free of omitted common factors. Findings The authors find that global influences are the most important drivers of returns and that industrial sectors are highly integrated with the global economy. The authors show that specifications that comprise only macroeconomic factors and proxies for omitted factors in the form of residual market factors are likely to be underspecified. This study demonstrates that a factor analytic augmentation is an effective approach to ensuring an adequately specified model. Research limitations/implications The findings have a number of implications that are of interest to investors, econometricians and researchers. While the study focusses on a single market, the South African stock market, as represented by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), it is a highly developed and globally integrated market. In terms of market capitalization, it exceeds the Madrid Stock Exchange, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the BM&F Bovespa. Yet, a limited number of studies investigate the macroeconomic drivers of the South African stock market. Practical implications Investors should be aware that while the South African domestic environment, especially political risk, has an impact on returns, global influences are the greatest determinants of returns. No industrial sectors are insulated from global influences and this limits the potential for diversification. This study suggests an alternative set of macroeconomic factors that may be used in further analysis and asset pricing studies. From an econometric perspective, this study demonstrates the usefulness of a factor analytic augmentation as a solution to factor omission in models that use macroeconomic factors to proxy for systematic influences that describe asset prices. Originality/value The contribution lies in providing insight into a large and well-developed yet understudied financial market, the South African stock market. This study considers a much broader set of macroeconomic factors than prior studies. A methodological contribution is made by estimating and interpreting standardized coefficients to discriminate between the impact of domestically and internationally driven factors. This study shows that should coefficients not be standardized, inferences relating to the relative importance of factors will differ. Finally, the authors unify an approach of using pre-specified factors with a factor analytic approach to address factor omission and to ensure a valid and readily interpretable specification.

COVID-19 and investor sentiment influence on the US and European countries sector returns

Although some studies recently address the association between COVID-19 sentiment and returns, volatility, or stock trading volume, no one conducts an analysis to measure the impact of investor rationality or irrationality on the influence on countries and sectors’ returns. This work creates a text media sentiment and combines its influence with the outbreak cases on the stock market sector returns of the US, Europe, and their main countries most affected by the pandemic. This allows us to perceive the ranking impact of rationality or irrationality on country and sector stock returns. This work applies a random-effects robust panel estimation, with an M-estimator. This paper concludes that US returns are more sensitive to sentiment, and thus more prone to irrational factors than confirmed cases compared to Europe and that country factors influence the returns differently. In Italy and Spain as the most punished countries in Europe apart from the UK, present sector indexes return more reactive to verified cases, or rationality, namely, tourism, real estate, and the automobile (this last one in Italy). The importance of this work resides in providing a new in-depth analysis of irrational behavioral metrics among countries, which allows for comparison. Moreover, it allows observing which sectors’ and which countries’ asset returns are most sensitive to rational or irrational expressions of events, allowing for arbitraging, financial planning for investors, decision-makers, and academia on an in and out of pandemic context. AcknowledgmentThis work is funded by National Funds through the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/05583/2020. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Research Centre in Digital Services (CISeD) and the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu for their support.

Do Country Risks Matter for Tourism Development? International Evidence

This research fills the gap in the tourism literature on the impacts of country stability—including political, financial, and economic—on tourism development (i.e., international tourist arrivals, international tourism revenues, and travel and leisure sector returns). To account for possible asymmetric and nonlinear relationships among variables, we apply a new method of moment quantile regression, by using panel data from 106 countries spanning the period 2006–2017. From a global perspective, the empirical results indicate that higher country stability generally leads to higher tourism development, while there is no salient influence of financial stability on travel and leisure sector returns. This suggests that the effects of country risk ratings are mostly nonlinear across different tourism development quantiles. Additionally, different components of risk rating scores have diverse impacts on tourism development. The findings mean that policy makers should consider their tourism condition when setting country stability strategies.

VOLATILITY TRANSMISSION BETWEEN US ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY AND BIST (BORSA ISTANBUL) MAJOR SECTOR INDICES

The significant effects of global economic policy uncertainties on world markets have been revealed in the related literature recently. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the volatility interaction (the causality in variance relationship) between uncertainty in US economic policies and BIST (Borsa Istanbul) major sector indices (financial, industrial, and technology indices). To satisfy this purpose, the causality in variance approach proposed by Hafner and Herwartz (2006) is utilized. The findings of the implemented volatility model show that the US economic policy uncertainty and BIST (Borsa Istanbul) major sector indices are strongly influenced by long-term volatility. According to the main findings of the causality invariance test, it is observed that there are significant and robust volatility transmissions from the US economic policy uncertainty to the BIST significant sector returns (financial, industrial, and technology sector returns). The test findings indicate that the BIST significant sector returns are quite sensitive to shocks in the US economic policy uncertainty. The results of the analysis present considerable implications for market participants in terms of developing effective economic policies and constructing optimal portfolios.