Dynamic causality between the U.S. stock market,the Chinese stock market and the global gold market: implications for individual investors’ diversification strategies

This paper proposes a generalization of the prior VAR and EGARCH model to explore the linkage between returns and volatility transmissions in the U.S. stock market, the Chinese stock market, and the global gold market from 10 July 1996 to 20 July 2018. We found that past returns of the U.S. stock market can predict the current returns of the other two markets, and that significant reciprocal volatility transmission existed within and across all three markets. We further implemented average out-of-sample (OOS) forecasting to show that a risk-adjusted portfolio, such as mean-variance with sample estimator, does not outperform an equal-weighted portfolio. This provides insights for individual investors and helps to explain the ongoing disagreement in the portfolio literature concerning the effectiveness of risk-adjusted portfolios and equal-weighted portfolios when the number of assets is small.     

Oil shocks,US economic uncertainty,and emerging stock markets

This paper investigates the impacts of oil price shocks and US economic uncertainty on emerging equity markets within a structural VAR model. I find that both precautionary oil demand and US economic uncertainty shocks have significant negative effects on emerging stock returns, whereas aggregate demand shocks cause a sustained rise of the returns. In particular, the direct effects of oil shocks on emerging stock returns are amplified by the endogenous response of US economic uncertainty. Variance decomposition analysis shows that oil market fundamentals and US economic uncertainty are an important determinant of emerging equity returns, accounting for 35% and 24% of their long-term variations, respectively. The heterogeneous impacts of structural shocks on individual emerging markets, however, suggest that a well-diversified portfolio can be obtainable.     

A simple model of emerging market portfolio structure

Many emerging market economies have experienced large buildups of foreign exchange rate reserves over the last decade. Much of the contemporary discussion of this phenomenon has focused on this reserve growth as the consequence of exchange rate policies which have maintained fixed pegs to the US dollar. By contrast, this paper focuses on emerging market reserve choice as a consequence of portfolio diversification, applied to the experience of Asian economies. While Asian economies have become significant gross creditors in bonds and other fixed income assets, their liability position in equity and FDI assets has also grown significantly. This suggests that a full understanding of the reserve growth episode must be seen as part of an overall model of portfolio choice. The paper constructs a model of the interaction between an emerging market and an advanced economy in which an optimal general equilibrium portfolio structure implies that emerging market economies simultaneously build up a stock of foreign exchange rate reserves while receiving FDI flows from the advanced economy. The model can provide a reasonable quantitative account of the recent Asian experience.     

Dynamic Correlation Analysis of Asian Stock Markets

This paper examines the stock market linkages within the Asia-Pacific region and between Asian markets and the U.S. market over the period of January 2000 to June 2010, employing the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model. Our results show that there exist very high correlations among the stock markets during the 2008 financial crisis. Therefore, consistent with the finding in literature, there are no diversification benefits during the financial crisis. However, our results show that there are still substantial opportunities for global investors to improve the risk-return performance between China and other markets during the sample period. In addition, we find evidence that the U.S. market significantly affects the stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Using T-GARCH model, there is a strong evidence of an asymmetric effect on conditional variance except stock markets in China and Malaysia.     

The relationship between developed equity markets and the Pacific Basin's emerging equity markets

Using a trivariate vector autoregression (VAR) model with a proper control for heteroscedasticity, this paper investigates the relationships between the two largest equity markets in the world—the U.S. and Japan—and the four Asian emerging equity markets: Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Evidence indicates that the links between the developed markets and the Asian emerging markets (AEMs) began to increase after the stock market crash in October 1987, and have significantly intensified since the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in July 1997.     

Dynamic correlation and equicorrelation analysis of global financial turmoil: evidence from emerging East Asian stock markets

This study investigates the dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs) between eight emerging East Asian stock markets and the US stock market and analyses the dynamic equicorrelation among these nine stock markets. We find a significant increase in the conditional correlations and equicorrelation in the first phase of the global financial crisis. We refer to this finding as contagion from the US stock market to the emerging East Asian markets. We also find an additional significant process of increasing correlations and equicorrelation (herding) in the second phase of the global financial crisis. Further, we employ two new models, namely DCCX-MGARCH (a DCC Multivariate GARCH model with exogenous variables) and DECOX-MGARCH (a dynamic equicorrelation multivariate GARCH model with exogenous variables), to identify the channels of contagion. We find that an increase in the VIX Index increases the conditional correlations and equicorrelation, while increases in TED spreads decrease the conditional correlations of six emerging East Asian countries with the USA. We compare the accuracy of the conditional correlation estimates of the DCC and DCCX models (or DECO and DECOX models) by constructing a loss function. We find that the DCCX (DECOX) model provides more accurate conditional correlation estimates than the DCC (DECO) model by extracting additional information from exogenous variables.     

Impact of macroeconomic factors and country risk ratings on GCC stock markets: evidence from a dynamic panel threshold model with regime switching

This study examines the non-linear relationship between stock markets in GCC countries and their country risk ratings as well as with major macroeconomic factors. Based on a dynamic panel threshold model with two and four regimes, the results provide evidence of short-term asymmetry between first-lagged GCC stock returns and the performance of GCC stock markets. In addition, only the financial risk (FR) rating has a significant positive effect on the performance of GCC stock markets according to the prevailing regimes for the GCC lagged returns and the Brent oil market. Among the macroeconomic factors, improvements in the global stock markets, the MSCI Global Islamic Index, and the oil price increased the performance of GCC stock markets, whereas increases in the gold price, the 3-month U.S. Treasury bill rate, and the U.S. Treasury bond rate reduced the performance of the GCC stock markets. These results have important implications for investors, policymakers, and portfolio managers.     

Regional spillovers across transitioning emerging and frontier equity markets: A multi-time scale wavelet analysis

The episodic wave of crises experienced across the global financial markets over the past two decades has raised questions surrounding the vulnerability of transitioning emerging and frontier equity markets to exogenous shocks. These markets, by design, have lacked the institutional or financial architecture supporting their capital base compared to more established markets. We make the initial attempt to examine four such stock markets (Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa and Israel). We perform multi-timescale analysis using wavelet-based time and frequency decompositions in order to investigate (i) whether the shocks transmitted were pure contagion or fundamental-based and (ii) also whether the dynamic evolution of stock market integration was mainly short-term or long-term. We find that prior to the 2008/09 US subprime crisis, the shocks generated pure contagion in contrast to the subprime crisis that reveals evidence supportive of fundamental-based contagion. Further, when exploring the dynamics of market integration, we find that integration strengthens over time as opposed to any immediate short-term outcome. This supports policies engendered to promote stock market resiliency and stability.     

Quantile spillovers and dependence between Bitcoin,equities and strategic commodities

This paper has two aims. We first examine the dynamic spillovers between Bitcoin and 12 developed equities, gold, and crude oil for different market conditions using a Bayesian Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model with daily spot prices. Our econometric approach enables us to capture the left and right tails as well as the shoulders of the return distribution corresponding to volatility spillovers under the bear, normal, and bull market states among these financial assets. We quantify and trace the dependence and directional predictability from Bitcoin to other assets using the sample cross-quantilogram. Our key findings offer convincing evidence of time variation in the level of volatility. Spillovers between Bitcoin and other financial assets intensify during extreme global market conditions. Secondly, results from the cross-quantilogram indicate strong dependence and positive directional predictability between Bitcoin and most equities and crude oil when market returns are bullish. However, during the bearish market period, there is negative dependence and predictability from Bitcoin to stocks in Finland, the Netherlands, the U.S.A, and the crude oil market only. This implies that Bitcoin can act as a hedge to stocks in Finland, the Netherlands, the U.S.A, and the crude oil market. However, insignificant dependence and directional predictability from Bitcoin to the remaining assets indicate that Bitcoin may act as a safe-haven to these assets during bearish markets. Our findings hold important implications for both international investors and portfolio managers who consider Bitcoin as part of their portfolio diversification and other investment strategies.     

Interrelationship between crude oil and the stock markets of major demanders and suppliers in emerging and developed markets

This paper investigates the time-varying relationship between the stock markets of advanced and emerging oil-exporting and oil-importing countries and the international crude oil price indices. The results reveal that the time-varying among the oil-exporting and oil-importing countries responds similarly to aggregate supply- and demand-side effects. Oil-exporting countries have a slightly higher integration with the oil markets, while oil supply shocks have a slightly higher impact on emerging oil-exporting countries. The oil markets exhibit a lower time-varying relationship with the Asia-Pacific oil-importing markets, which indicates those markets may be attractive to investors during periods of turbulence in the oil market.     

Do oil producing countries offer international diversification benefits? Evidence from GCC countries

This paper provides evidence of the existence of diversification benefits in international stock markets when oil producing countries are included in a global portfolio. Moreover, it examines whether recent oil shocks and financial events have significant impact on the conditional correlations and diversification benefits. Using stock returns from developed, emerging, GCC countries and a global portfolio, the empirical findings show that while developed and emerging stock markets have experienced increased correlations over relatively long periods of time, the correlation in GCC stock markets remained low and constant offering high diversification benefits. Interestingly, the paper also finds that, during 2012–2014, the rising conditional correlation levels have reversed trends in developed and emerging markets alike offering more potential for international diversification. Our results are robust to model selection, data frequency, and innovations distribution.     

Short-run and long-run dynamic linkages among international stock markets

This paper investigates the dynamic linkages among the U.S., Japan, U.K. and German stock market indices using daily data for the April 1, 1984 to May 31,91 period. In contrast to previous studies, a vector error correction model of cointegrated variables as developed by Johansen (1988, 1991) and Johansen and Juselius (1990) is employed to examine both short-run and long-run intermarket relationships among these four stock markets. Significant evidence is found in support of both short-run and long-run relationships among these four stock market indices. The U.S. stock market leads other stock markets in short-run in the pre and post October 1987 crash, but leads all other markets in the long-run in all periods examined. The presence of a one long-run cointegrating equilibrium relationship among the four stock market indices implies a limited role of international diversification for investors with long holding periods. However, because the US-Japan-Germany stock market indices, and Japan-UK-Germany indices are not cointegrated with each other, these indices may yield international portfolio diversification in the long-run. Finally, the conflicting results from multivariate cointegration tests found in this study can not be used to provide conclusive evidence on international stock market efficiency.     

Structural change and international stock market interdependence: Evidence from Asian emerging markets

This study investigates the evolving pattern of the interdependence among selected Asian emerging markets and three major stock markets (Japan, UK and US). Using rolling cointegration methods and the recently developed algorithms of inductive causation, we found that time-varying cointegration relationships exist among these stock markets. The results indicate that the wave of financial liberalization policies in the early 1990s led to a significant increase in market linkages which was later weakened during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Furthermore, the data indicate that Japan and the US have the greatest influence on the emerging markets while the influence of Singapore and Thailand has increased since the Asian financial crisis.     

Price connectedness between green bond and financial markets

We study price connectedness between the green bond and financial markets using a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model that captures direct and indirect transmission of financial shocks across markets. Using heteroskedasticity to identify the structural VAR model parameters, our empirical findings reveal that the green bond market is closely linked to the fixed-income and currency markets, receiving sizeable price spillovers from those markets and transmitting negligible reverse effects. We also show that, in contrast, the green bond market is weakly tied to the stock, energy and high-yield corporate bond markets. These findings have implications in terms of portfolio and risk management decisions for environmentally aware investors holding positions in green bonds.     

The more contagion effect on emerging markets: The evidence of DCC-GARCH model

The paper aims to test the existence of financial contagion between foreign exchange markets of several emerging and developed countries during the U.S. subprime crisis. As a result of DCC-GARCH analysis, we find the evidence of contagion during U.S. subprime crisis for most of the developed and emerging countries. Another finding is that emerging markets seem to be the most influenced by the contagion effects during U.S. subprime crisis. Since financial contagion is important for monetary policy, risk measurement, asset pricing and portfolio allocation, the findings of paper may be interest of policy makers, investors and portfolio managers.     

Assessing the impacts of oil price fluctuations on stock returns in emerging markets

This paper investigates the effects of oil price shocks on stock market returns in emerging countries. It differs from previous works in three main aspects: i) we distinguish three groups of countries, the largest net-oil importing countries, the moderately oil-dependent countries, and the largest net-oil exporting countries; ii) The potential influence of bullish and bearish market conditions on the causal relationship between oil and stock returns is controlled for in our analysis; iii) The empirical investigation is based on an analysis of long-term correlation and a conditional multifactor pricing model. Using data from twenty-five emerging countries, our results suggest that oil price risk is significantly priced in emerging markets, and that the oil impact is asymmetric with respect to market phases.     

Financial market integration: Theory and empirical results

In this article, we introduce a new theoretical international asset pricing model which accounts for partial financial market segmentation. We show that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of implicit and/or explicit segmentation factors, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the classic ICAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We test this model empirically for a sample of emerging markets. Our findings show that the degree of market integration is time-varying and that the premium associated with the domestic risk factors is the most important component of the total risk premium. However, our results also show that most of the emerging markets we study have become more integrated in the end of our sample period as a result of liberalization and reforms.     

The Impact of U.S. Individual and Institutional Investor Sentiment on Foreign Stock Markets

This study examines the degree to which U.S. individual and institutional investor sentiments are propagated abroad. Previous studies construe investor sentiments as fully irrational; we find contrary evidence that individual and institutional investor sentiments are driven by both rational and irrational factors, with distinct effects on domestic and international stock market returns. The generalized impulse response functions from VAR model estimations show that U.S. institutional investor sentiments have varying degrees of impact on the equity markets of the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil, and no effect on Chile. Specifically, the individual investor sentiment effect is statistically significant only for the U.K market. Not surprisingly, the two classes of investor sentiments have a strong significant effect on the U.S. stock market returns. The response of the U.S. to individual investor sentiments is relatively more erratic, while the response to institutional investor sentiments is smoother. This difference in pattern becomes more visible when we consider the response of the foreign stock markets. We find significant effects of rational sentiments of institutional investors on the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil. However, there is an insignificant effect of the irrational sentiments on the same set of countries. A direct implication of our empirical evidence is that it is important for international asset pricing models to consider the role of rational sentiments of institutional and individual investors on developed and emerging markets.     

FINANCIAL CRISES AND INTERNATIONAL STOCK MARKET VOLATILITY TRANSMISSION

This paper examines the interplay between stock market returns and their volatility, focusing on the Asian and global financial crises of 1997–98 and 2008–09 for Australia, Singapore, the UK, and the US. We use a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH) model and weekly data (January 1992–June 2009). Based on the results obtained from the mean return equations, we could not find any significant impact on returns arising from the Asian crisis and more recent global financial crises across these four markets. However, both crises significantly increased the stock return volatilities across all of the four markets. Not surprisingly, it is also found that the US stock market is the most crucial market impacting on the volatilities of smaller economies such as Australia. Our results provide evidence of own and cross ARCH and GARCH effects among all four markets, suggesting the existence of significant volatility and cross volatility spillovers across all four markets. A high degree of time‐varying co‐volatility among these markets indicates that investors will be highly unlikely to benefit from diversifying their financial portfolio by acquiring stocks within these four countries only.     

Extracting portfolio management strategies from volatility transmission models in regime-changing environments: Evidence from GCC and global markets

Unlike previous studies, this paper uses the Multi-Chain Markov Switching model (MCMS) to examine portfolio management strategies based on volatility transmission between six domestic stock markets of Gulf Arab states (GCC) and global markets (i.e., the U.S. S&P 500 index and oil prices) and compares the results with those of the VAR model. Our volatility approach is range-based and not return-based which is traditionally used in estimating the optimal hedge ratios and portfolio weights. The results demonstrate the relative hedging effectiveness of the MCMS model compared to the VAR. We also highlight the time and regime dependency of the optimal hedge ratios and the portfolio weights for each selected pair of the considered markets conditional on the regime of the same market and the regimes of the other market. Policy implications on portfolio strategies under different states are also discussed.