Can cryptocurrencies be a safe haven during the novel COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from the Tunisian Stock Market

In this paper, we discuss the behavior of stock market returns in Tunisia during the COVID-19 outbreak. Using the OLS regression, we find that Bitcoin act as a hedge and Ethereum as a diversifier for Tunisia’s stock market before the COVID-19 outbreak; however, Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot generate benefits from portfolio diversification and hedging strategies for financial investors during the COVID-19. Moreover, Dash, Monero, and Ripple act as hedges before the COVID-19 outbreak and as diversifiers during this pandemic. Our results reveal that gold acts as a hedge and diversifier before the pandemic, but it's neither hedge nor a haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the results indicated that the expected volatility of the US stock market has an impact on the Tunisian stock market. Finally, our results indicate that the growth rate of the COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths harms Tunisia's stock market

Shelter in Uncertainty: Evaluating Gold and Bitcoin as Safe Havens Against G7 Stock Market Indices During Global Crises

This paper investigates the hedging and safe haven capacity of gold and Bitcoin against the G7 stock market indices during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, and the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Using a novel Quantile-VAR connectedness approach, the results show that, at the median quantile, both gold and Bitcoin act as effective hedges during normal market conditions and strong safe-haven assets during the three crises. Gold emerges as the most prominent safe haven asset, outperforming Bitcoin, especially during the war and the SVB collapse. Among the G7 stock market indices, the Japanese and the American stocks may be used as risk diversifiers during crises. As for the rest of the G7 stocks, they are regarded as “risk-on” investments.  Next, we assessed the robustness of our results at various quantiles. We found them to be generally consistent with the outcomes obtained at the median quantile, with one exception related to the S&P500.The results show that the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war are much stronger than the American banking crisis

Investigating dynamic interdependencies between traditional and digital assets during the COVID-19 outbreak: Implications for G7 and Chinese financial investors

This paper discusses the relationship between the volatilities of traditional and digital assets before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using daily data relevant to the period ranging from January 4, 2016, to April 15, 2020, the results of the DCC-MVGARCH model indicate that the stock markets responded to the Coronavirus outbreak as the crypto market with worrying volatility. Before this outbreak, Bitcoin and gold are considered as a hedge for US, English, French, German, and Italian financial investors. The conditional correlation between stock indices and other assets was skyrocketing during this pandemic, except for the couple SSE-Ripple

The minimum price required by investors in IPOs

With regard to purchasing Tunisian IPOs shares, the current paper aims at considering two types of investors: a non-institutional investor and an institutional one. Each is concerned with placing a purchase order at the offer price during the subscription period. In line with the literature on IPOs, we attempted to determine the minimum price required by an investor allowing for recovering the initial investment, information costs, transaction costs, and the offsetting of shortfall. We expect that the initial return of an IPO share in the Tunisian market is positively related to the following factors: the number of non-institutional investors participating during the subscription period, the subscription ratio of institutional investors, the expected rate of return by investors, the gap between the closing date of the subscription period and the day following the announcement of the subscription result, the gap between the announcement of the subscription result and the first listing day, the number of trading days, the cost of information and the transaction costs. However, it is negatively related to other determinants, such as the discount level, the number of shares allocated for a non-institutional investor and the number of offered shares, which are allocated to non-institutional investors

Extreme dependence and risk spillover across G7 and China stock markets before and during the COVID-19 period

International audiencePurpose The paper analyzes downside and upside risk spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach By using VAR-ADCC models and conditional value at risk (CoVaR) techniques, downside and upside risk spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China are analyzed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings The results suggested existence of a significant and asymmetrical two-way risk transmission between majority of pair markets, but the degree of asymmetry differs according to the use of the entire cumulative distributions or distribution tails. Downside and upside risk spillovers are significantly larger before the COVID-19 pandemic in all cases except between CAC 40/DAX and S&P/SSE pairs. Originality/value The paper used CoVaR and delta-CoVaR to investigate the downside and upside spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Efficiency of U.S. Oil and Gas Companies toward Energy Policies

The petroleum industry faces crucial environmental problems that exacerbate business instability, such as climate change and greenhouse gas emission regulations. Generally, governments focus on pricing, environmental protection, and supply security when developing energy policy. This article evaluates the technical efficiency of 53 oil and gas companies in the United States during the period 1998–2018 using the stochastic frontier analysis methods and investigates the degree to which energy policies influence the efficiency levels in these companies. Our empirical results show that the average technical efficiency of the 53 U.S. oil and gas companies is 0.75 and confirm that prices, production, consumption, and reserves of the U.S. petroleum and gas have a significant influence on technical efficiency levels. Specifically, our findings show that renewable energy and nuclear power contribute to explaining the distortion between the optimal and observed output of the U.S. oil and gas companies

Spillovers between cryptocurrencies, gold and stock markets: Implication for hedging strategies and portfolio diversification under the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose - This study analyzes the static and dynamic risk spillover between US/Chinese stock markets, cryptocurrencies and gold using daily data from August 24, 2018, to January 29, 2021. This study provides practical policy implications for investors and portfolio managers. Design/methodology/approach The authors use the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover indices based on the forecast error variance decomposition from vector autoregression framework. This approach allows the authors to examine both return and volatility spillover before and after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. First, the authors used a static analysis to calculate the return and volatility spillover indices. Second, the authors make a dynamic analysis based on the 30-day moving window spillover index estimation. Findings Generally, results show evidence of significant spillovers between markets, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, cryptocurrencies and gold markets are net receivers of risk. This study provides also practical policy implications for investors and portfolio managers. The reached findings suggest that the mix of Bitcoin (or Ethereum), gold and equities could offer diversification opportunities for US and Chinese investors. Gold, Bitcoin and Ethereum can be considered as safe havens or as hedging instruments during the COVID-19 crisis. In contrast, Stablecoins (Tether and TrueUSD) do not offer hedging opportunities for US and Chinese investors. Originality/value The paper's empirical contribution lies in examining both return and volatility spillover between the US and Chinese stock market indices, gold and cryptocurrencies before and after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This contribution goes a long way in helping investors to identify optimal diversification and hedging strategies during a crisis

Are Cryptocurrencies a Backstop for the Stock Market in a COVID-19-Led Financial Crisis? Evidence from the NARDL Approach

The study investigates the safe haven properties and sustainability of the top five cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero, and Ripple) and gold for BRICS stock markets during the COVID-19 crisis period from 31 January 2020 to 17 September 2020 in comparison to the precrisis period from 1 January 2016 to 30 January 2020, in a nonlinear and asymmetric framework using Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) methodology. Our results show that the relationship dynamics of stock market and cryptocurrency returns both in the short and long run are changing during the COVID-19 crisis period, which justifies our study using the nonlinear and asymmetric model. As far as a sustainable safe haven is concerned, Dash and Ripple are found to be a safe haven for all the five markets before the pandemic. However, all five cryptocurrencies are found to be a safe haven for three emerging markets, such as Brazil, China, and Russia, during the financial crisis. In a comparative framework, gold is found to be a suitable safe haven only for Brazil and Russia. The results have implications for index fund managers of BRICS markets to include Dash and Ripple in their portfolio as safe haven assets to protect its value during a stock market crisis

Nonlinear tail dependence in cryptocurrency-stock market returns: The role of Bitcoin futures

International audienc

Is digital gold a hedge, safe haven, or diversifier? An analysis of cryptocurrencies, DeFi tokens, and NFTs

The crypto assets market is growing rapidly, exposing investors to new risks. As a result, finding viable candidates to hedge and diversify crypto portfolios is a critical and timely topic. In this paper, we explore the potential of gold-backed cryptocurrencies as safe haven assets in the context of building a diversified digital assets portfolio. Empirically, we investigate the financial properties (diversification, safe haven, and hedging capabilities) of two gold-backed cryptocurrencies against the three main digital assets categories, i.e. traditional cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) tokens, considering major external and internal crises. We also estimate the hedge ratios and the hedging effectiveness of the considered pairs. Overall, our findings indicate that the examined gold-backed cryptocurrencies are good diversifiers, with varying hedging, and safe haven properties depending on the nature of the crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine War, as well as the digital asset category considered. Several financial implications for investors and policymakers are proposed and discussed