Search results

This study aims to research how the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impacts the selected sector price indices in Borsa Istanbul (BIST), Turkey.

The authors use the event study method because it is a useful method as stock prices and market instantly reflect the effect of such an unusual event. Data are retrieved from the https://www.investing.com/.

The authors find that selected sectors are impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. The banking and transportation sectors, on the announcement of first death, were impacted negatively, while the telecommunication and food –beverage sectors were impacted positively. The transportation and banking sectors experience an obvious downturn after the spread of COVID-19, while the food–beverage and telecommunication sectors experience an obvious upturn after the spread of COVID-19. Besides, the most adversely impacted sector is banking.

This study bridges the research gap and adds significant insights to the existing literature. The main contribution of this study to the existing literature is the unexpected outbreak impacts on financial markets, especially on BIST. It is also expected that this study will make a significant contribution to analysts, researchers and policymakers.

This study aims to analyze the time-varying correlation between the cryptocurrency policy uncertainty (UCRY Policy) and cryptocurrency returns. More specifically, it analyzes whether these correlations vary according to the uncertainty attributable to salient events such as China banning ICOs, cryptocurrency exchanges attacks, Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic crisis and the United States (U.S.) Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) announcement about Ripple.

To measure the dynamic relationship, it uses the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model of Engle (2002) to consider time variation in UCRY Policy and cryptocurrency returns. The data set encompasses the weekly frequency data of the UCRY Policy and Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM), Dash (DASH), Monero (XMR) from 4 September 2016, to 21 February 2021.

Empirical findings indicate that the correlations between the UCRY Policy and the BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP, XLM, DASH and XMR returns are consistently negative. Thus, an increase in the volatility of the UCRY Policy can lead to a decrease in volatility for BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP, XLM, DASH and XMR returns. Besides, these findings indicate that the estimated DCC is not only time-varying but also substantially responsive to salient events, such as China banning ICOs, cryptocurrency exchanges attacks, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and SEC’s announcement about Ripple. Besides, empirical findings show that cryptocurrency returns are adversely impacted by UCRY Policy during the salient events (China bans ICOs, the hack of cryptocurrency exchanges, Covid-19 crisis), suggesting their failure to act as a hedge or safe-haven asset.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study investigates the time-varying correlation between UCRY Policy and cryptocurrency returns. Besides, this study may be useful for new studies and fill a gap in the finance literature, due to the limited number of studies on the UCRY Policy in the finance literature.