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We examine the impact of global geopolitical risk (GPR) measures on US Treasuries' returns and volatilities, differentiating between long- and short-run investment behaviours among an array of time-to-maturities ranging from 1 month to 30 years, taking into account various economic and financial factors. Using monthly data and a panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the results indicate a negative long-run relationship between US Treasuries' returns and the global GPR index. These results generally hold when we consider geopolitical threats and geopolitical acts, although they exhibit some discrepancies between these two components and across the yield curve. Further results show a positive and strong long-run relationship between the US Treasuries' realized volatilities and the various geopolitical risk measures. The evidence holds true when we disentangle 'bad' from 'good' realized volatilities, although the impact of bad volatility is stronger than that of good volatility, which points to an asymmetric effect of realized volatility in US Treasuries. A sub-sample analysis suggests the robustness of the main results. Our analyses provide the first empirical evidence of the information content of GPR for US Treasury securities' returns and volatilities, which matters to fixed-income investors and decision-makers at the Federal Reserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper establishes a direct link between (anti) herding behavior in currency markets and investor sentiment, proxied by a social media based investor happiness index built on Twitter feed data. Our analysis of daily data for nine developed market currencies suggests that the foreign exchange market is generally characterized by strong anti-herding behavior. Utilizing the quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach, developed by Sim and Zhou (2015), we show that the relationship between investor sentiment and anti-herding is in fact regime specific, with anti-herding behavior particularly prominent during states of extreme investor sentiment. The effect of sentiment on anti-herding is generally stronger in extreme bullish sentiment states, while average sentiment is associated with less severe anti-herding. The findings lend support to the behavioral factors for asset pricing models and suggest that real time investor sentiment signals can be utilized to monitor potential speculative activities in the currency market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world have responded to the COVID-19 outbreak with a mix of policies. The strictest responses of the New Zealand government are notable, given their abilities to contain and limit the spread of the virus. However, their impacts on stock returns remain unclear. This paper investigates the impact of three policies, namely lockdown, the stimulus package, and the travel ban, on the returns of 14 New Zealand industry stock indices. Using daily data from 1 January 2019 to 25 August 2020, evidence points to a heightened level of integration among the various industry stock indices during the early stages of the pandemic. Only lockdown has had a positive impact on aggregate stock returns, suggesting its ability to raise investors' confidence in the overall stock market. At the industry level, the impact of the three response policies is generally positive but heterogeneous across industry stock indices. Notably, none of the three adopted policies significantly impact technology, healthcare, and real estate returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses hourly data to analyse the return and volatility transmission of oil-gold and oil-Bitcoin pairs during the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods. The results show that the return transmissions vary across the two periods for both pairs. There is a unidirectional volatility spill-over from gold to oil in the pre-COVID-19 period, and from oil to gold during the COVID-19 period. There is a significant volatility spill-over from Bitcoin to oil during the pre-COVID-19 period, whereas no evidence of volatility spill-over between oil and Bitcoin is shown during the COVID-19 period. Based on optimal weights, investors should increase their investments in, (a) gold for a portfolio of oil-gold, and (b) Bitcoin for a portfolio of oil-Bitcoin during the COVID-19 period. All hedge ratios are higher during the COVID-19 period, implying a higher hedging cost compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. The results of hedging effectiveness reveal that the risk-adjusted returns can be improved by constructing a portfolio of oil-gold and oil-Bitcoin during both sample periods. Further results reveal that gold is a strong safe haven and a hedge for the oil market, while Bitcoin serves as a diversifier for the oil market during the COVID-19 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are price discontinuities in cryptocurrencies jointly related to large swings in geopolitical risk? This is a relevant question to answer given recent news from the press that Bitcoin's price jumps are driven by jumps in the level of geopolitical risk index. To answer this question, we examine first the jump incidence of daily returns for Bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies and then study the co-jumps between cryptocurrencies and the geopolitical risk index using logistic regressions. Our dataset is at the daily frequency and covers the period 30 April 2013 to 31 October 2019. The results show that the price behaviour of all cryptocurrencies under study is jumpy but only Bitcoin jumps are dependent on jumps in the geopolitical risk index. This revealed evidence of significant co-jumps for the case of Bitcoin only nicely complements previous studies arguing that Bitcoin is a hedge against geopolitical risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the interconnectedness among 95 tourism firms in the U.S. over the 2018–2020 period with a focus on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The results using tail risk spillover analysis show that the level of risk contagion significantly increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. Small tourism firms become more systemically important during the Covid-19 pandemic while the level of bad risk contagion has a negative impact on the stock performance of US tourism firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the dynamics of return and volatility connectedness between the rare earth stock index and the indexes of clean energy, consumer electronics, telecommunications, healthcare equipment, and aerospace & defence. Using daily data from 25 March 2010 to 25 August 2020, a quantile-based connectedness approach is applied to uncover both average and tail-based connectedness while considering the full sample period and the COVID-19 pandemic days. The results suggest that the interdependence among these indexes changes dramatically at the lower and upper quantiles, suggesting a strong influence of extreme market scenarios on both returns and volatility connectedness dynamics. Higher integration of sectoral indexes is observed during 2010–2012 and the COVID-19 pandemic period. Health care and telecommunication indexes have been consistent transmitters of return and volatility spillovers to other indexes during the full sample period. Consumer electronics and clean technology indexes switch their roles from a net receiver to a net transmitter during pandemic days. The rare earth remains on the recipient's side consistently. The findings indicate that the ongoing U.S.–China trade embargo has not impacted the return and volatility dynamics of the five sectoral indexes superseding the demand-driven dynamics for rare earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the ability of a newspaper-based economic sentiment index of the United States to predict housing market movements using daily data from 2nd August, 2007 to 19th June, 2020. For this purpose, we use a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test, which allows us to test for predictability over the entire conditional distribution of not only housing returns, but also volatility, by controlling for misspecification due to nonlinearity and structural breaks. Our results show that economic sentiment does predict housing returns (unlike the conditional mean-based Granger causality test) and volatility, barring the extreme upper ends of the respective conditional distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence, based on a linear framework, tends to suggest that while mortgage default risks can predict weekly and monthly housing returns of the United States, the same does not hold at the daily frequency. We, however, indicate that the relationship between daily housing returns with mortgage default risks is in fact nonlinear, and hence a linear predictive model is misspecified. Given this, we use a k-th order nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test, which in turn allows us to test for predictability over the entire conditional distribution of not only housing returns, but also volatility, by controlling for misspecification due to nonlinearity. Based on this model, we show that mortgage default risks do indeed predict housing returns and volatility, barring at the extreme upper end of the respective conditional distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine spillover and its determinants among Eurozone sector level credit markets using time and frequency domain spillover approaches. Based on network theory and connectedness analysis, we identify the sectors that are major transmitters and receivers of spillover during normal and crisis periods. The rolling window analysis shows that short-run spillover among credit market sectors intensifies during global and Eurozone crisis periods. Further, using Bayesian model averaging, we find that overall financial conditions and stock market volatility are the main drivers of total and sector-level spillover. Our findings have important implications for policymakers and investors interested in Euro-area credit risk at the sector level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses dependence-switching copulas and time-varying single copulas to characterize the world oil-stock market dependence in a broad range of emerging economies, and it then conducts a regression analysis to explore the determinants of the market dependence patterns. Our results support a positive crude oil-emerging stock market link overall. The regression results show that oil return volatility, country-specific variables (i.e., stock market volatility, petroleum production growth), and US economic policy uncertainty have positive effects on the oil-stock dependence. However, a strong US economy tends to decrease the oil-stock dependence. The robustness of these findings is confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test to examine the causal effect of geopolitical risks on return and volatility dynamics of Islamic equity and bond markets. Geopolitical risks are generally found to impact Islamic equity market volatility measures, rather than returns. However, geopolitical risks tend to predict both returns and volatility measures of Islamic bonds. Interestingly, causality, when it exists for returns and/or volatility of Islamic equities and bonds, is found to hold over entire conditional distributions of returns and volatilities, barring the extreme ends of the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the embryonic literature on the relations between Bitcoin and conventional investments by studying return and volatility spillovers between this largest cryptocurrency and four asset classes (equities, stocks, commodities, currencies and bonds) in bear and bull market conditions. We conducted empirical analyses based on a smooth transition VAR GARCH-in-mean model covering daily data from 19 July 2010 to 31 October 2017. We found significant evidence that Bitcoin returns are related quite closely to those of most of the other assets studies, particularly commodities, and therefore, the Bitcoin market is not isolated completely. The significance and sign of the spillovers exhibited some differences in the two market conditions and in the direction of the spillovers, with greater evidence that Bitcoin receives more volatility than it transmits. Our findings have implications for investors and fund managers who are considering Bitcoin as part of their investment strategies and for policymakers concerned about the vulnerability that Bitcoin represents to the stability of the global financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ a spectral causality approach to uncover short-, medium-, and long-run causal relations between the US implied volatility index and the five individual implied volatility indexes of BRICS markets from 16th March 2011 to 31st January 2018. We show that the volatility causal relations differ between the short and long run in many cases. Although the results indicate the dominant role played by US uncertainty in shaping uncertainty in all BRICS markets, there is also evidence of a feedback effect from Brazil, Russia, and China to the US that differs across the spectrum. The implications for hedging and risk management practices are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relationship between Bitcoin and commodities by assessing the ability of Bitcoin to act as a diversifier, hedge, or safe haven against daily movements in commodities in general, and energy commodities in particular. We focus on energy commodities because energy, in the form of electricity, is an essential input in the Bitcoin production. For the entire period, results show that Bitcoin is a strong hedge and a safe-haven against movements in both commodity indices. We further examine whether that ability is also present for non-energy commodities and our analysis show insignificant results when energy commodities are excluded from the general commodity index. We also account for the December 2013 Bitcoin price crash and our results reveal that Bitcoin hedge and safe-haven properties against commodities and energy commodities are only present in the pre-crash period, whereas in the post-crash period Bitcoin is no more than a diversifier. In addition to uncovering the time-varying role of Bitcoin, we highlight the dissimilarity in the dynamic correlations between the extreme downward and extreme upward movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]