Ramsawak Richard, Nguyen Chau Trinh
The Business School, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) - Vietnam, HCMC, Viet Nam.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 8;10(14):e34259. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e34259. eCollection 2024 Jul 30.
The Caribbean stock markets have been largely ignored by scholars, partly due to the conventional view of a weak and inefficient system, and low integration to the world financial system. This paper examines the major announcements related to COVID-19 as exogenous shocks and their impacts on stock market returns in the two most developed stock markets in the Caribbean region. Using the standard event methodology and a dynamic difference in differences model, we confirm a significant decline in stock returns in response to negative announcements of COVID-19-related news. Other positive news such as the announcements of re-opening of the economy and vaccine had a positive impact on stock returns. The Jamaica stock markets are likely to be weakly efficient and exhibit low responsiveness to major COVID-19-related events and news. Most sectors in the Caribbean economy experienced significant losses to stock returns resulting from these shocks. The banking, conglomerates, and property sectors continued to be subdued in the face of continued uncertainty and unpredictability of the overall impact of COVID-19. The energy and communication sectors seemed to be either the most resilient or most asymmetrically informed sectors as they are found not to be affected by COVID-19-related announcements. The manufacturing, property, and non-banking sectors are found to recover quickly from the shocks. Our analysis provides further insight in terms of portfolio investment strategies in the Caribbean region.
加勒比地区的股票市场在很大程度上被学者们忽视了，部分原因是传统观点认为该地区的股票市场体系薄弱、效率低下，且与世界金融体系的融合程度较低。本文考察了与新冠疫情相关的重大事件作为外部冲击及其对加勒比地区两个最发达股票市场的股票回报的影响。使用标准事件研究方法和动态差分模型，我们证实，新冠疫情相关负面新闻的发布导致股票回报显著下降。其他正面新闻，如经济重新开放和疫苗的消息，对股票回报产生了积极影响。牙买加股票市场可能效率较弱，对与新冠疫情相关的重大事件和新闻反应迟钝。加勒比地区经济中的大多数行业因这些冲击而遭受了显著的股票回报损失。面对新冠疫情总体影响的持续不确定性和不可预测性，银行、企业集团和房地产行业仍然低迷。能源和通信行业似乎要么是最具韧性的行业，要么是信息最不对称的行业，因为它们未受与新冠疫情相关公告的影响。制造业、房地产和非银行行业从冲击中迅速复苏。我们的分析为加勒比地区的投资组合策略提供了进一步的见解。
