Bidirectional Return Research Articles

A Toolkit Intervention for School–Aged Jamaican Students: Strategy for Collaborative Involvement During the Pandemic

The Ministry of Education and Youth, Jamaica, designed Home Learning Kits (HLKs) for students in Grades 1–6 to address learner disengagement due to the change in classroom settings because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This intervention required a collaborative approach by diverse educational stakeholders for the production, distribution, collection, implementation, and bi–directional return of the kits. This novel approach to learner engagement prompted a need to understand the implementation of the HLKs and their use by students. Using a convergent explanatory mixed method approach, the sample included 167 of 400 schools and approximately 36,000 students islandwide. The quantitative data was analysed descriptively and thematically for the qualitative data. Overall, the results revealed the need for better collaborative efforts to execute the HLK intervention. The findings are significant to assist the Ministry of Education to implement policies and further initiatives for transformed educational outcomes.

Dynamic correlations and portfolio implications across stock and commodity markets before and during the COVID-19 era: A key role of gold

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected stock markets around the globe, adding serious challenges to asset allocations and hedging strategies. This investigation analyses the dynamic correlations and portfolio implications among the S&P 500 index and various commodities (gold, WTI crude oil, Brent oil, beverages, and wheat) before and during the COVID-19 era. Using multivariate asymmetric GARCH models, the results show weak correlations during the standard period. However, the correlations intensify and become more complicated during the COVID-19 era, especially between gold and S&P 500. Similarly, bidirectional return and volatility spillovers across stock-commodity markets are more pronounced during the COVID-19 outbreak. Analysis involving the optimal portfolio weights and time-varying hedge ratios indicates that a $1long position in the S&P 500 can be hedged for 15 cents in crude oil during the standard period and for 33 cents in gold during the COVID-19 era. A portfolio of S&P 500 – beverages displays the highest VaR, while a portfolio of S&P 500 – gold displays the lowest VaR, especially during the COVID-19 era. This finding suggests that gold offers better portfolio diversification benefits and downside risk reductions, which are useful in determining strategies for portfolio investors during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Roles of stable versus nonstable cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin market dynamics

This work assesses the roles of nonstable and stable cryptocurrencies in the dynamics of the Bitcoin market. Formally, we aim to study the return and volatility transmissions between Bitcoin and stablecoins in comparison with Bitcoin/nonstable cryptocurrency pairs. Accordingly, we deduce the optimal portfolio weights based on the hedging strategy. Our results explain which cryptocurrency plays the role of safe haven or hedge and whether the relationship can be described more by the contagion effect versus interdependence based on fundamentals. We observed bidirectional return transmissions between Bitcoin and both nonstable as well as stable cryptocurrencies. The volatility transmission is bidirectional for Bitcoin/Ethereum and Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash over the short and long terms and unidirectional for Bitcoin/Tether and Bitcoin/TrueUSD over the short term. There are no long-term bidirectional volatility transmissions except for Bitcoin/TrueUSD. The optimal portfolio weights of stable (nonstable) cryptocurrencies are found to be lower (higher) than that of Bitcoin.

Stock Return Jumps and Tail Risk Assessment: The Case of European Non-Euro Banking Sectors

This study investigates the linkages between stock return jumps, volatilities, and tail risks in European non-euro banking sectors over the period 2005−2020. As a result, our examinations derive the following significant findings. First, for European non-euro banking sectors, in extending EGARCH models, taking bidirectional stock return jumps into consideration is always effective. Second, for European non-euro banking sector stocks, in extending EGARCH models, incorporating skewed and fat-tailed or fat-tailed densities is also effectual. In addition, our additional analyses further find that when taking bidirectional return jumps into account, the volatility estimates from our extended EGARCH models more precisely capture the tail risks in European non-euro banking sector stocks. This signifies that if we ignore bidirectional stock return jumps, we will undervalue the levels of tail risks when stock prices of international banking sectors plunge.

New running gear for improving the lateral dynamic characteristics of rubber-tired light rail vehicles

Rubber-tired light rail vehicles are generally operated on lines which include a number of small curves, steep slopes, or track switching sections to reduce construction costs or to place multiple stations in densely populated areas. Recently, the tendency is to increase acceleration, deceleration, and operation speed to shorten travel time and to increase transportation capacity. These track characteristics and operation patterns may result in deteriorating lateral dynamic characteristics in rubber-tired light rail vehicles. Therefore, running gear in rubber-tired light rail vehicles needs to play a role in effectively damping lateral vibrations and shock transmitted from the guidance rails through the guidance wheels. In this paper, new running gear was proposed to improve the lateral vibration and ride comfort in rubber-tired light rail vehicles. The new running gear has been newly installed with lateral rubber shock absorbers that can dampen lateral vibration on curved routes. In addition, it has been installed with a bi-directional return spring in place of the existing restoring coil spring and hydraulic damper to improve lateral vibration on straight routes. The effect of improving the lateral dynamic characteristics of the new running gear was verified through dynamic analysis and actual vehicle driving tests (field tests).

Return and Volatility Spillover between Cryptocurrency and Stock Markets: Evidence from Turkey

The aim of the study investigates the return and volatility spillovers and conditional correlations between Borsa Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 Index (BIST100) and Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Litecoin (LTH) using daily data for the period between August 07, 2015 and May 20, 2021 with VAR-DCC-GARCH model. We find no bidirectional return spillovers between BIST100 and cryptocurrencies. In line with the volatility spillover results of the study, it has been determined that there is a unidirectional shock transmission from BIST100 to BTC, XRP and LTH, and a unidirectional volatility spillover from BIST100 to BTC and ETH. Also, in the study, it has been determined that the dynamic conditional correlations between BIST100 and four cryptocurrencies have a highly variable over time and their average is very close to zero. However, in possible panic periods, the situation is reversed

The COVID-19 Outbreak and Risk–Return Spillovers between Main and SME Stock Markets in the MENA Region

This study investigates return and asymmetric volatility spillovers and dynamic correlations between the main and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) stock markets in Saudi Arabia and Egypt for the periods before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Return and volatility spillovers are modelled using a VAR-asymmetric BEKK–GARCH (1,1) model, while a VAR-asymmetric DCC–GARCH (1,1) model is employed to model the dynamic conditional correlations between these markets, which are then used to determine and explore portfolio design and hedging implications. The results show that while bidirectional return spillovers between the main and SME stock markets are limited to Saudi Arabia, shock and volatility spillovers have different characteristics and dynamics in both main–SME market pairs. In addition, the dynamic correlations between the main and SME markets are mostly positive and have notably increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Saudi Arabia, suggesting that adding SME stocks to a main stock portfolio enhances its risk-adjusted return, especially during tranquil market phases. One practical implication of our results is that the development of SME stock markets can indirectly contribute to economic development via the main market channel and provide an avenue for portfolio diversification and risk management.

Spillovers and Dynamic Correlations between REITs, Exchange Rates, and Equities in Japan

This paper investigates return transmission, volatility spillovers, and dynamic correlations between the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) index, the Nikkei 225 index, and the yen/dollar exchange rate. As a result, we find many new findings and these all show our significant contributions as follows. First, there is return transmission from the Nikkei 225 to the TSE REIT index. Second, there is bidirectional return transmission between the Nikkei 225 and the yen/dollar exchange rate. Third, there are bidirectional volatility spillovers between the Nikkei 225 and the TSE REIT index. Fourth, there are volatility spillovers from the Nikkei 225 to the yen/dollar exchange rate. Fifth, dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs) between TSE REIT returns and Nikkei 225 returns are not low. Moreover, DCCs between Nikkei 225 returns and yen/dollar exchange rate changes are not high. Furthermore, DCCs between TSE REIT returns and yen/dollar exchange rate changes are quite low. These our new findings shall be useful for not only deepening our understanding of financial markets but also our related future research.

Price and volatility spillovers between global equity, gold, and energy markets prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study sets out to provide fresh evidence on the dynamic interrelationships, at both return and volatility levels, between global equity, gold, and energy markets prior to and during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. We undertake our analysis within a bivariate GARCH(p, q) framework, after orthogonalizing raw returns with respect to a rich set of relevant universal factors. Under the COVID-19 regime, we find bidirectional return spillover effects between equity and gold markets, and unidirectional mean spillovers from energy markets to the equity and gold counterparts. The results also suggest the presence of large reciprocal shock spillovers between equity and both of energy and gold markets, and cross-shock spillovers from energy to gold markets. Most probably driven by the recent oil price collapse, energy markets appear to have a substantial cross-volatility spillover impact on the others. Our results offer implications for policymakers and investors.

Volatility Spillovers among Developed and Developing Countries: The Global Foreign Exchange Markets

In this paper, we investigate the “static and dynamic” return and volatility spillovers’ transmission across developed and developing countries. Quoted against the US dollar, we study twenty-three global currencies over the time period 2005–2016. Focusing on the spillover index methodology, the generalised VAR framework is employed. Our findings indicate no evidence of bi-directional return and volatility spillovers between developed and developing countries. However, unidirectional volatility spillovers from developed to developing countries are highlighted. Furthermore, our findings document significant bi-directional volatility spillovers within the European region (Eurozone and non-Eurozone currencies) with the British pound sterling (GBP) and the Euro (EUR) as the most significant transmitters of volatility. The findings reiterate the prominence of volatility spillovers to financial regulators.

Volatility spillovers and hedging effectiveness between health and tourism stocks: Empirical evidence from the US

The study evaluates the return and volatility transmission between the health and tourism stocks. The outbreak of covid-19 pandemic brought about an unprecedented crisis in the global health and financial market with the tourism sector being among the largest casualty as it experienced an almost total collapse as a result of economic lockdowns and movement restrictions, while the health sector witnessed considerable boom. We employ the VARMA–CCC-AGARCH model, based on the preliminary tests, on daily data collected for health and tourism stocks between January 02, 2018 and July 09, 2020. The empirical estimation is also partitioned into full, pre-covid-19 and covid-19 periods to elicit the impact of the pandemic outbreak. We further examine the optimal weights of holding health and tourism stocks and compute the hedging ratios in the presence of health risks. Our empirical findings show evidence of significant negative bidirectional return spillover between the health and tourism sectors particularly during the covid-19 period. In addition, the hedge ratios further confirm the hedging effectiveness of health stocks for risks associated with tourism stocks particularly during the pandemic period. Essentially, our results show that a diversified asset portfolio that includes health together with tourism stocks may improve risk-adjusted return performance for investors especially during pandemics.

Crude oil market and Nigerian stocks: An asymmetric information spillover approach

AbstractThis article examines the nature of information spillovers, in return and volatility, that exists between the full index stock of the Nigerian stock exchange (NSE) and the crude oil markets (Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil markets). We adopted the asymmetric VAR − MGARCH − GJR − BEKK model and found evidence of unidirectional return spillover from the Brent oil market to the NSE and a bidirectional return spillover between the NSE market and the WTI oil market. The response of the WTI market to a shock on the NSE market is rather short‐lived. There exists strong evidence of a lead–lag relationship between the crude oil market and the NSE market wherein the crude oil market leads or drives the NSE market return fluctuations. For both crude oil markets, the Brent and the WTI markets, there exists a bidirectional volatility spillover between the NSE index and the crude oil markets, as well as significant asymmetric shocks. Practical policy implications and recommendations were made, based on the findings.

Directional Spillover Effects Between BRICS Stock Markets and Economic Policy Uncertainty

In recent years, researchers have increasingly studied the association between the stock market and economic policy uncertainty (EPU). To have more profound knowledge, this paper investigates the evolution of the mean spillover effects between EPU and BRICS stock markets by employing both the multivariate DECO-GARCH model proposed by Engle and Kelly (J Bus Econ Stat 30(2):212–228, 2012) and the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (Int J Forecast 26(1):57–66, 2012). The results uncover that the average return equicorrelation between the BRICS stock indices and EPU is positive. In addition, there is a bidirectional return spillover between EPU and BRICS stock returns in the aftermath of the recent European debt crises and the global financial crisis. Overall, our results reveal the existence of the short term, the pass-through impact of EPU via stock price fluctuation in BRICS countries. These findings might provide significant implications for portfolio managers, investors, and government agencies.

Price and Volatility Spillovers between Global Equity, Gold, and Energy Markets Prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study sets out to provide fresh evidence on the dynamic interrelationships, at both return and volatility levels, between global equity, gold, and energy markets prior to and during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. We undertake our analysis within a bivariate GARCH(p, q) framework, after orthogonalizing raw returns with respect to a rich set of relevant universal factors. Under the COVID-19 regime, we find bidirectional return spillover effects between equity and gold markets, and unidirectional mean spillovers from energy markets to the equity and gold counterparts. The results also suggest the presence of large reciprocal shock spillovers between equity and both of energy and gold markets, and cross-shock spillovers from energy to gold markets. Most probably driven by the recent oil price collapse, energy markets appear to have a substantial cross-volatility spillover impact on the others. Our results offer implications for policymakers and investors.

Revisiting the Integration of China Into the World Crude Oil Market: The Role of Structural Breaks

The China’s crude oil futures market (INE market), as it was first launched in late March of 2018, quickly draws much attention from global investors. In reference to the high frequency data, this research explores how well this new product reacts efficiently to international influences and to what extent it can be integrated with traditional benchmarks such as WTI and Brent. The multivariate GARCH models are employed to capture the cross-market time-varying correlations, return and volatility spillovers, which are modified by incorporating the detected structural breaks in the return dynamics to improve the accuracy of model estimates. Empirical results indicate a strong integration of INE market with these international benchmarks. A high but time-varying correlation is observed with recurring highs around 0.7. Spillover effects have included significant bidirectional return and volatility spillovers between the INE and the international benchmark markets. Secondly, INE market appears to interact better with the Brent market than with the WTI market. Thirdly, structural breaks can influence correlations, the portfolio weights and hedge ratios. Lastly, the correlation between crude oil futures markets decreases significantly during the periods when structural breaks caused by economic and/or geopolitical events are identified. These findings have important implications in policy makings and economic decisions on portfolio management and hedging strategies.

Dynamic return and volatility spillovers among S&P 500, crude oil, and gold

AbstractThis article examines the return and volatility spillover effects among the S&P 500, crude oil, and gold by employing the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012). Monthly realized volatility and return series covering the period from January 1986 to August 2018 are used to examine the return and volatility spillovers. Our findings indicate a bidirectional return and volatility spillover among these assets. The full sample empirical evidence is consistent with the structure in which oil plays a central role in the information transmission mechanism. The role of oil and gold as a safe haven has changed over time in financial and nonfinancial economic turbulence time‐span. Commodity market financialization has decreased the effectiveness of adding commodities to portfolios after 2002. We find that return spillover is much higher both with considerable negative and positive larger shocks than average shocks, corresponding to left and right tails of the conditional distribution, respectively, while volatility spillover is higher only with positive large shocks than average shocks, which corresponds to shock in the right tail.

Financial crises and dynamic spillovers among Chinese stock and commodity futures markets

This study examines the dynamics of return and volatility spillover across Chinese stock and four commodity futures, namely, CSI 300 index, aluminium, copper, fuel oil, and natural rubber, by employing both the multivariate DECO-GARCH model and the spillover index model. In particular, we investigate the dynamics of return and volatility spillover indices that reveal the intensity and direction of transmission during the recent financial crises, that is, the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the 2010–2012 European debt crisis. From our empirical results, we find a positive equicorrelation level which sharply bursts during the recent financial crises. This effect can be particularly persistent during periods of turmoil, which diminishes the benefits of international portfolio diversification for investors. We also find the bi-directional return and volatility spillover indexes across Chinese stock and commodity future markets. These trends are more pronounced in the aftermath of the recent financial crises, indicating the strength of spillovers during periods of turmoil. Finally, we show evidence asserting that stock nexus commodity futures portfolio offers better but different diversification benefits and hedging effectiveness for the Chinese stock market. Overall, our findings shed new light for understanding the channels of information transmission, which can be useful in determining superior investment decisions and creating trading strategies for portfolio investors.

The co-movement between oil and clean energy stocks: A wavelet-based analysis of horizon associations

The production of clean energy is crucial for protecting the environment and satisfying the future demand for energy. However, the growth in clean energy production and consumption is influenced by the developments in the oil and the clean energy technology markets. Thus, it is crucial to study the association among these markets and this is the main objective of this research. Compared to the existing literature, we provide evidence from multiple time horizons. In particular, we combine wavelets over various time scales with multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) to find significant bidirectional return and risk transfer from oil and technology to the clean energy market. The transmissions are found to be more pronounced at longer time horizons. These results highlight the importance of certainty and stability in the oil and technology markets for the growth of clean energy particularly in the long term.

Return and volatility spillovers between currency and bond markets in India

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the return and volatility spillovers between the foreign exchange and bond markets of India using a bivariate asymmetric BEKK-GARCH (1,1) model for the period 4 April 2005 to 31 March 2017. We find the evidence of bidirectional return and volatility spillovers with asymmetric effects between these two markets. The spillovers are evidenced even during the periods when foreign portfolio investments in the Indian bond markets were relatively low suggests the existence of strong inter-linkages between both the markets.

Return transmission and asymmetric volatility spillovers between oil futures and oil equities: New DCC-MEGARCH analyses

Applying our newly extended vector autoregressive (VAR) dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) asymmetric spillover (AS) multivariate exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (MEGARCH) model with skew-t errors, this paper investigates return transmission and volatility spillovers between oil futures and international oil and gas sector equity returns. Employing a global perspective, and using six international oil and gas sector equity index returns for North America, Latin America, Developed Europe, Emerging Europe, the Far East, and BRIC alongside the WTI oil futures return, we obtain the following findings. First, we reveal unidirectional return transmission from oil futures to oil equities for Developed Europe, Emerging Europe, the Far East, and BRIC. Second, we find unidirectional return transmission from North American oil equities to oil futures, and mostly bidirectional return transmission between oil futures and Latin American oil equities. Moreover, we reveal unidirectional asymmetric volatility spillover effects from all the six oil equities to oil futures except for the Far East, where we observe mostly bidirectional asymmetric volatility spillovers. Furthermore, using the conditional variances and covariances from our new model, we also compute more precise time-varying optimal hedge ratios and optimal portfolio weights, and clarify that in international markets, hedging oil equities with oil is cheaper than vice versa.