THE MACROECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF THE STOCK MARKET RETURNS OF TURKISH MANUFACTURING FIRMS: THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PERIOD

Abstract

This study explores the impacts of the exchange rate, consumer confidence, oil prices on the stock returns of the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) manufacturing firms for the timeline aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020 – September 2022). As the manufacturing companies comprise the majority of the stock market of the BIST, the composite index of these industrial companies (XUSIN) is selected as the response variable. Implementing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds-testing methodology on the monthly time series data, the cointegration existence is detected among the series. The empirical results also show that oil price is the most significant determinant among these variables affecting manufacturing companies’ returns for the long-run. When considering oil as a vital production input in industries, the decreases in stock prices resulting from oil price rises (i.e. increases in production costs) are inevitable. However, the significant long-run effects of exchange rates and the consumer confidence index on stock returns of this industry cannot be detected for the Covid-19 period.