IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/rbfpps/rbf-08-2020-0215.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

COVID-19 fear index: does it matter for stock market returns?

Author

Listed:
  • Sowmya Subramaniam
  • Madhumita Chakraborty

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to capture the investors' mood related to the COVID-19 pandemic and analyze its impact on the stock market returns. Design/methodology/approach - To capture the investor mood related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors construct a unique COVID-19 fear index based on the Search Volume Index (SVI) from Google Trends (http://www.Google.com/trends/) of the search terms related to COVID-19 words and phrases as revealed by Google and Internet dictionaries. The COVID-19 fear index was used to investigate its impact on the stock market returns. Findings - The study finds a strong negative association between COVID-19 fear and stock returns. Unlike other studies, the relationship is persistent for a significant period. This relationship is not found to reverse in the following days. The results also highlight that COVID-19 fear strongly impacts the stock market. The sentiment persists for a significant period and is not reversed soon, unlike the regular times in earlier studies. Originality/value - The study is among the very few studies that constructed COVID-19 fear index using several Google search terms and captured its impact on the stock market returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Sowmya Subramaniam & Madhumita Chakraborty, 2021. "COVID-19 fear index: does it matter for stock market returns?," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 13(1), pages 40-50, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:rbfpps:rbf-08-2020-0215
    DOI: 10.1108/RBF-08-2020-0215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/RBF-08-2020-0215/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/RBF-08-2020-0215/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/RBF-08-2020-0215?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlini, Federico & Farina, Vincenzo & Gufler, Ivan & Previtali, Daniele, 2024. "Do stress and overstatement in the news affect the stock market? Evidence from COVID-19 news in The Wall Street Journal," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Anastasiou, Dimitris & Ballis, Antonis & Drakos, Konstantinos, 2022. "Constructing a positive sentiment index for COVID-19: Evidence from G20 stock markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Riahi, Rabeb & Bennajma, Amel & Jahmane, Abderrahmane & Hammami, Helmi, 2024. "Investing in cryptocurrency before and during the COVID-19 crisis: Hedge, diversifier or safe haven?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(PB).
    4. Kerry Liu, 2023. "America's decoupling from China: A perspective from stock markets," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 32-52, February.
    5. Goodell, John W. & Kumar, Satish & Li, Xiao & Pattnaik, Debidutta & Sharma, Anuj, 2022. "Foundations and research clusters in investor attention: Evidence from bibliometric and topic modelling analysis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 511-529.
    6. Mirza Sikalo & Almira Arnaut-Berilo & Azra Zaimovic, 2022. "Efficient Asset Allocation: Application of Game Theory-Based Model for Superior Performance," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-15, March.
    7. Dash, Saumya Ranjan & Maitra, Debasish, 2022. "The COVID-19 pandemic uncertainty, investor sentiment, and global equity markets: Evidence from the time-frequency co-movements," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    8. Blajer-Gołębiewska, Anna & Honecker, Lukas & Nowak, Sabina, 2024. "Investor sentiment response to COVID-19 outbreak-related news: A sectoral analysis of US firms," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    9. Steven Buigut and Burcu Kapar, 2022. "Do COVID-19 Incidence and Government Intervention Influence Media Indices?," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 79-100.
    10. Kunal Saha & Vinodh Madhavan & G. R. Chandrashekhar, 2022. "Effect of COVID-19 on ETF and index efficiency: evidence from an entropy-based analysis," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 46(2), pages 347-359, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:rbfpps:rbf-08-2020-0215. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.