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This study aims to investigate the asymmetric impact of daily announcements regarding COVID-19 on investor sentiment in the stock market.

This study uses a Non-Linear Autoregressive Distribution Lag (NARDL) model that relies on positive and negative partial sum decompositions of the Coronavirus indicators. Five investor sentiments had been used and the analysis is conducted on the full sample period from 24th February 2020 to 25th March 2021.

The results show that new cases have a greater impact on investor sentiment compared to daily announcements of new deaths related to COVID-19. In addition to revealing a significant impact of new COVID-19 new cases and new death announcements on a daily basis on investor sentiment over the short- and long-term, this paper also highlights the nonlinearity and asymmetry of this relationship in the short and long run. Investors' sentiments are more affected by negative news regarding Covid 19 than positive news.

Financial markets have been severely affected by COVID-19 pandemic. This study is the first to measure the extent of reaction of investors to positive and negative announcements of COVID-19. Interestingly, this study examines the asymmetric effect of daily announcements on new cases and new deaths by COVID-19 on investor sentiments and derive many implications for portfolio managers.

The study aims to explore the relation between dividend policy of any company and its stock volatility.

Companies listed on six GCC stock markets are used in the analysis and the data ranges from 2006 to 2020. Fixed effect and random effect panel data analysis is used to explore the association between stock volatility and the dividend policies.

A significant negative relation is observed between dividend payout and stock volatility. Also, significant negative relation between stock volatility and equity is found, whereas insignificant positive relation is observed between asset growth and stock volatility.

The data of all listed companies on six GCC markets were not available.

The question of raising dividend or maintaining at the current level is of utmost importance for the managers of any company before making any investment decisions. Also, the investors look at the dividend announcements as a sort of signal about the future prospect of the company. A stable or fluctuating dividends may be preferred by the investors that ultimately changes the stock price of any company.

The relationship between dividend policy and the volatility of stock price is explored for emerging GCC markets which is the major significance of this paper which will have many social impacts on various stakeholders of any company including investors, regulators and employees, etc.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study for GCC markets is done to establish a relation between stock volatility and the dividend policies which is needed by the academicians to further explore the behavior of these markets.