The Volatility In Financial Markets During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Business economics - Market research, grade: 1.3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: The objective of this essay is to investigate the effects of Covid-19 on the volatility of individual asset markets as well as the correlation between those markets using the Dynamic Conditional Correlation GARCH methodology developed by Engle (2002). The investigated assets are the major world equity indices as well as oil, gold, and bitcoin. I have found significant volatility clustering over the entire spectrum of assets, as well as increases in the correlation between assets during the initial phase of the pandemic. Furthermore, gold and bitcoin are shown to exhibit relatively low correlations with the investigated equity markets and may hence act as important components of a robust portfolio during turbulent times. While no direct effect of Covid-19 related policy variables on the returns could be established for all assets, the results indicate that the response of financial markets was immediate and not dependent on the national exposure to the pandemic itself. Finally, all markets are shown to recover within a reasonably short time span.