The Outbreak of COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from a Worst-affected Economy

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected the entire global financial market in an unprecedented way. Due to the disruptions that emerged in the global market; the financial market of India also reacted to the pandemic and witnessed sharp volatility. Given the COVID-19 situation, this paper empirically investigates the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian stock market. Using daily closing prices of indices such as Nifty and Sensex, this study examines the volatility of these indices over the period 3^rd September 2019 to 10^th July 2020. Further, the study has attempted to make a comparative analysis of the return of the stock market in pre-COVID-19 and during the COVID-19 situation. GARCH model is used to capture the volatility of the indices. Findings reveal that the stock market in India has experienced volatility during the pandemic period. While comparing the results with that of the pre-COVID-19 period, we find that return on the indices is higher in the pre-COVID-19 period than during COVID-19. The return of both the stock market reached the bottom line during the first lockdown period, which is from24^th March to 6^th April.

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