Are Islamic stock indexes exposed to systemic risk? Multivariate GARCH estimation of CoVaR

The main objective of this paper is to assess the exposure of Islamic stock indexes to systemic tail events. We use Conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) and Delta CoVaR measures as developed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2011) and a sample of Islamic and conventional stock indexes, from various developed and emerging markets, during the period September 2005 to March 2015. The empirical results reveal that the systemic risk has a moderate adverse effect on Islamic indexes, with a lower level in Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC hereafter). The findings also show the Asian stock indexes can be considered as effective hedge assets, after the global financial crisis (GFC hereafter). Furthermore, the empirical reveal that portfolio including Islamic stock indexes performs better than a benchmark portfolio in turmoil periods. These findings have several implications in financial decisions including the strategy of stability and asset allocation.     

Sources of Fluctuations in Islamic,U.S., EU,and Asia Equity Markets: The Roles of Economic Uncertainty,Interest Rates,and Stock Indexes

This article analyzes the economic and financial sources of fluctuations among the U.S. federal funds rates, the U.S. economic policy uncertainty, and the indices of the U.S., European, Asian, and Islamic stock markets. The impulse response analysis shows that the U.S. economic policy uncertainty shocks have significant and negative effects unanimously on the U.S., European, Asian, and Islamic stock markets. A contractionary monetary policy shock, in terms of a higher federal funds rate, has also a statistically significant and negative effect on all of the stock markets. The variance decomposition results indicate that the Islamic stock index is mainly affected by the U.S. stock index shock, thus negating its dichotomy hypothesis. The U.S. economic uncertainty shock explains an important portion of fluctuations for all four stock indices. The degree of synchronization between the EU stock market and other markets has weakened after the U.S. financial crisis.     

A Market Efficiency Comparison of Islamic and Non-Islamic Stock Indices

This article examines the martingale difference hypothesis (MDH) and the random walk hypothesis (RWH) for nine conventional and nine Islamic stock indices: Asia-Pacific, Canadian, Developed Country, Emerging, European, Global, Japanese, UK, and United States. It investigates whether Islamic stock indices are more, less, or as efficient as their conventional counterparts. We test four sub-periods of bullish and bearish stock markets, together with the financial meltdown and its recovery, over the period 1997–2012. We use the Escanciano and Lobato’s (2009) automatic portmanteau test (AQ) and Deo’s (2000) test for the MDH. We also apply the automatic variance ratio test (AVR) developed by Choi (1999) and Kim (2009) for the RWH. Over the period from 1997 to 2012, we find that three conventional indices (Europe, Japan, and UK) are efficient, but that none of the Islamic indices are efficient in these markets. During the recent financial crisis, our results indicate slightly more efficiency for the Islamic indices than their conventional counterparts. Our study finds that overall the conventional indices are more efficient than their Islamic counterparts. Nevertheless, during periods of general downturns the Islamic indices have shown the same level of efficiency as their counterparts. Furthermore, it appears that during the last two sub-periods under study, the Islamic indices have moved toward efficiency, displaying the same level of efficiency as their counterparts.     

Stock market contagion in Central and Eastern Europe: unexpected volatility and extreme co-exceedance

We examine whether there is contagion from the US stock market to six Central and Eastern European stock markets. We use a novel measure of contagion that examines whether volatility shocks in the US stock market coupled with negative returns are followed by higher co-exceedance between US and emerging stock markets. Using our approach and controlling for a set of market-related variables, we show that during the period from 1998 to 2014, financial contagion occurred, that is, unexpected negative events in the US market are followed by higher co-exceedance between US and Central and Eastern European stock markets. Even though contagion is stronger during the financial crisis, it also occurs in tranquil times.     

Impact of the global financial crisis on Islamic and conventional stocks and bonds

This study explores the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on Islamic and conventional stock and bond indices in 11 Islamic and eight non‐Islamic countries. We find that there are benefits of Islamic stocks during the GFC, particularly during the early stage of the crisis because Islamic institutions are prohibited from holding sub‐prime mortgage securities and derivatives. The strongest benefits of Islamic stocks are in the UK and USA. We conclude that there are benefits of risk reduction and stability for Islamic stocks during a financial crisis, although not necessarily during a global recession.     

Risk transmission between Islamic and conventional stock markets: A return and volatility spillover analysis

This paper contributes to the current debate on the empirical validity of the decoupling hypothesis of the Islamic stock market from its mainstream counterparts by examining return and volatility spillovers across the global Islamic stock market, three main conventional national stock markets (the US, the UK and Japan) and a number of influential macroeconomic and financial variables over the period from July 1996 to June 2016. To that end, the VAR-based spillover index approach based on the generalized VAR framework developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) is applied. The empirical analysis shows strong interactions in return and volatility among the global Islamic stock market, the conventional stock markets and the set of major risk factors considered. This finding means that the Islamic equity universe does not constitute a viable alternative for investors who wish to hedge their investments against the vagaries of stock markets, but it is exposed to the same global factors and risks hitting the conventional financial system. Therefore, this evidence leads to the rejection of the decoupling hypothesis of the Islamic stock market from conventional stock markets, which has significant implications for faith-based investors and policy makers in terms of portfolio diversification, hedging strategies and contagion risk.     

The behaviour of asset return and volatility spillovers in Turkey: A tale of two crises

This paper examines return and volatility spillovers between the Turkish stock market with international stock, exchange rate and commodity markets. Our aim is not only to examine spillover behaviour with a large emerging market but also to examine cross—asset spillovers and how they vary across two periods of financial market crisis; the dotcom crash and the liquidity-induced financial crisis. This is to be compared with existing work that typically focuses on industrialised countries or single asset markets only. Using the spillover index methodology we uncover an interesting distinction between these two periods of markets stress. Over the dotcom period spillovers are largely between the same asset class, notably two exchange rate series and two international stock markets series. However, in the period including the financial crisis, spillovers both increase and cross asset types and suggest a much greater degree of market interdependence. Understanding this changing nature in spillovers is key for investors, regulators and academics involved in theoretical model development.     

Global financial crisis and emerging stock market contagion: A volatility impulse response function approach

By employing the volatility impulse response (VIRF) approach, this paper presents a general framework for addressing the extent of contagion effects between the BRICSs’ and U.S. stock markets and how the BRICSs’ stock markets have been influenced in the context of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. Our empirical results show during the period of 2007–2009 global financial crisis, there are significant contagion effects from the U.S. to the BRICSs’ stock markets. Yet, the degree of stock market reactions to such shocks differs from one market to another, depending on the level of integration with the international economy. Besides, the strengthened degree of stock market integration among the U.S. and BRICS has adverse effect such that if the 2007–2009 global financial crisis occurs today it may result in heavier impact on stock market volatility nowadays compared to the crisis-era.     

Financial liberalization and changes in the dynamic behaviour of emerging market volatility: Evidence from four Latin American equity markets

This paper examines whether the dynamic behaviour of stock market volatility for four Latin American stock markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and a mature stock market, that of the US, has changed during the last two decades. This period corresponds to years of significant financial and economic development in these emerging economies during which several financial crises have taken place. We use weekly data for the period January 1988 to July 2006 and we conduct our analysis in two parts. First, using the estimation of a Dynamic Conditional Correlation model we find that the short-term interdependencies between the Latin America stock markets and the developed stock market strengthened during the Asian, Latin American and Russian financial crises of 1997–1998. However, after the initial period of disturbance they eventually returned to almost their initial (relatively low) levels. Second, the estimation of a SWARCH-L model reveals the existence of more than one volatility regime and we detect a significant increased volatility during the period of crisis for all the markets under examination, although the capital flows liberalization process has only caused moderate shifts in volatility.     

On emerging stock market contagion: The Baltic region

This study provides new evidence on emerging stock market contagion during the Global Financial crisis (GFC) and the Euro zone Sovereign Debt Crisis (ESDC). Focusing on the three emerging Baltic markets and developed European markets, proxied by the EUROSTOXX50 stock index, we explore asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation dynamics across stable and crisis periods. Empirical evidence indicates a diverse contagion pattern for the Baltic region across the two crises. Latvia and Lithuania were contagious during the GFC, while they were insulated from the adverse effects of the ESDC. On the other hand, Estonia decoupled from the negative consequences during the global turmoil period, but recoupled during the ESDC. The results could be attributed to financial and macroeconomic characteristics of the Baltic countries before and after the turmoil periods and the introduction time of the Euro as a national currency.     

Linkages between Indian and US financial markets: impact of global financial crisis and Eurozone debt crisis

This paper examines inter-linkages between Indian and US equity, foreign exchange and money markets using the vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH-BEKK framework. We investigate the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone debt crisis (EZDC) on the conditional volatility and conditional correlation estimates derived from the multivariate GARCH model for Indian and US financial markets. Our results indicate that there is significant bidirectional causality-in-mean between the Indian stock market returns and the Rs./USD market returns, and significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from the US stock market returns to the Indian stock market returns. As regards volatility spillovers, we find that volatility in the Indian stock market rises in response to domestic as well as US financial market shocks but Indian financial market shocks do not impact the US markets. Further, impact of the recent crisis episodes on the covariance matrix is found to be significant. We find that volatility in the Indian and US financial markets significantly amplified during GFC. The conditional correlations across asset markets were significantly accentuated in the wake of the two crisis episodes. The impact of GFC on cross-market conditional correlations is higher for majority of the asset market pairs in comparison to the EZDC.     

Liquidity and Return Relationships in an Emerging Market

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between liquidity and stock returns in the Vietnam stock market during the global financial crisis. Vietnam is one of a new group of frontier emerging markets referred to as CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa). We use a rich and detailed data set of firm characteristics to identify a positive relationship between liquidity and stock returns. This contradicts the negative correlation typically found in stock returns in developed markets. Our results support the proposition that when a market is not fully integrated with the global economy, a lack of liquidity will be a less important risk factor. Our findings contribute to those studies that highlight the diversification benefits from including frontier markets, which have a lower degree of integration with the global economy, in international portfolios.     

Stock market recovery from the 2008 financial crisis: The differences across Europe

This study investigates the influence of the 2008 financial crisis on a number of European stock markets. The sample includes EU benchmark indices as well as European markets with slowed or hampered recovery over a period of ten years (2004–2014) thus allowing a comparison on their development before, during and after the crisis. We utilize a novel approach based on a combination of stochastic modeling and continuous wavelet transform. It enables a robust distinction between expected and unexpected spillover effects as well as assessment of the expected speed of European stock markets recovery. It further quantifies the temporal boundaries of absorption of negative and positive shocks coming from the US stock market and explains the observed asymmetry. The studied European markets are divided into several groups and expectations are built on the speed of their recovery. We find that the major reasons for the discrepancies observed between actual and expected recovery for some of the markets are due to structural breaks in the co-movement with US market as well as to weak domestic fundamentals.     

Interconnected multilayer networks: Quantifying connectedness among global stock and foreign exchange markets

This paper proposes a novel interconnected multilayer network framework based on variance decomposition and block aggregation technique, which can be further served as a tool of linking and measuring cross-market and within-market contagion. We apply it to quantifying connectedness among global stock and foreign exchange (forex) markets, and demonstrate that measuring volatility spillovers of both stock and forex markets simultaneously could support a more comprehensive view for financial risk contagion. We find that (i) stock markets transmit the larger spillovers to forex markets, (ii) the French stock market is the largest risk transmitter in multilayer networks, while some Asian stock markets and most forex markets are net risk receivers, and (iii) interconnected multilayer networks could signal the financial instability during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Our work provides a new perspective and method for studying the cross-market risk contagion.     

The changing and relative efficiency of European emerging stock markets

The martingale hypothesis is tested for 15 European emerging stock markets located in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey and the Ukraine. For comparative purposes, the developed stock markets in Greece, Portugal and the UK are also included. Rolling window variance ratio tests based on returns and signs and with wild bootstrapped p-values are used with daily data over the period beginning in February 2000 and ending in December 2009. The fixed-length rolling sub-period window captures changes in efficiency and is used to identify events which coincide with departures from weak-form efficiency and to rank markets by relative efficiency. Overall, return predictability varies widely. The most efficient are the Turkish, UK, Hungarian and Polish markets; the least efficient are the Ukrainian, Maltese and Estonian stock markets. The global financial market crisis of 2007–2008 coincides with return predictability in the Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian and UK stock markets. However, not all markets were affected: the crisis had little effect on weak-form efficiency in stock markets located in Greece, Latvia, Romania, Russia and Turkey.     

Correlation Dynamics in East Asian Financial Markets

We examine the dynamic relationship between stock returns and exchange rate changes using daily data from January 1994 to September 2013 for six East Asian countries. We use the multivariate GARCH-DCC model in order to disclose the relationship between stock markets and foreign exchange markets which is important for understanding financial stability. The estimation results reveal time varying correlations in the pre- and post-Asian crisis and the Global Financial Crisis periods for all countries. The correlations are stronger when the crisis intensifies. The degree of interdependence between both markets reflects a mutual markets response to shocks and changes in policy.     

Islamic investing

Using a large international sample of 35 developed and emerging markets, we analyze whether Islamic indices exhibit a different performance to conventional benchmarks. While there is no compelling evidence of performance differences in robust Sharpe ratio tests and after controlling for market risk, we find a significantly positive four-factor alpha for the aggregate developed markets region. This outperformance stems, however, mainly from the U.S. and is largely attributable to the exclusion of financial stocks in Sharia-screened portfolios. As the extensive downturn of financials is related to the recent financial crisis, we do not argue that this outperformance will continue over time. The style analysis reveals that Islamic indices invest mainly in growth stocks and positive momentum stocks. This, for a passive portfolio intriguing result can, however, be explained by the strong sector allocation towards energy firms and their strong momentum characteristic during the sample period.     

Do Islamic stock indices perform better than conventional counterparts? An empirical investigation of sectoral efficiency

Literature is rife with studies on efficiency of stock markets and financial performance aspects. One such aspect is the measurement of sectoral efficiency amongst stock markets. While there are several studies analysing sectorial efficiency, there is no study on the efficiency of Islamic sector indexes. The rise of Islamic indices has raised the question and multiple studies have been undertaken in exploring and validating the better performance from a risk return framework for the Islamic indices. This study attempts to pioneer in this niche area by conducting a comparative analysis of 10 sectoral global indices for both conventional and Islamic counterpart spanning over 18 years. The sample time period runs from 1 January 1996 until 31 December 2014. To further validate our study, we have divided our data into four major time periods, to factor in different phases the world markets have gone through in the sample period, i.e. 1996–2000; 2001–2002; 2003–2006 and 2006 to 2014. The methodology selected in understanding the efficiency of these sectoral stock indices is the multifractal de-trended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA). Our analysis reveals that in the shorter horizon, efficiency tends to follow a similar pattern amongst the conventional and Islamic counterpart. Furthermore, Islamic sectoral indices generally tend to exhibit a higher efficiency regime across the last decade. Overall, Islamic index seems to have stayed attractive and resilient, allowing conformity with the weak form efficient market hypothesis.     

Short-run disequilibrium adjustment and long-run equilibrium in the international stock markets: A network-based approach

In this paper, we propose a network-based analytical framework that exploits cointegration and the error correction model to systematically investigate the directions and intensities in terms of the short-run disequilibrium adjustment towards long-run equilibrium affecting the international stock markets during the period of 5 January 2007 to 30 June 2017. Under this setting, we investigate whether and how the cross-border directional interconnectedness within the world’s 23 developed and 23 emerging stock markets altered during the entire period of 2007–2017, and two specific periods of 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis and 2010–2012 European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The main results indicate that the magnitude of the short-run disequilibrium adjustment towards long-run equilibrium for individual stock markets is not homogeneous over different time scales. We report that the changes in directional interconnectedness within stock markets worldwide did occur under the impact of the recent financial crises. The derived networks of stock markets interconnectedness allow us to visually characterize how specific stock markets from different regions form interconnected groups when exhibiting similar behaviours, which none the less provides significant information for strategic portfolio and risk management.     

Creation of an Islamic stock index in West Africa

Islamic finance, which has become inescapable has entered into financial markets by offering solutions consistent with the precepts of the Shariah. The objective of this paper is to propose the creation of an Islamic stock index in West Africa. The choice of market values ​​requires extra financial and financial screening system. The results show that 10% of the securities in Nigeria Stock Exchange , the Regional Stock Exchange (Brvm) and the Ghana Stock Exchange (Gse) were selected to form the Islamic index " Ecowas Shariah index.