The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on metal, mining, and allied sectors in the Indian Stock Market

The paper investigates the effect of the first and second waves of COVID-19 on metal, mining, and its associated sectors stocks in India. Furthermore, the paper explores how the share price of the Indian metal, mining, and allied sectors is impacted and how it differs from the rest of the market. We also compare the effect of the pandemic waves on share prices related to metal, mining, and associated sectors in India during the study period, which ranges from January 2020 to December 2021. The share prices are collected from CMIE prowess for the sample firms. We use event study methodology to explore the impact of the different waves on the above-mentioned sectors. The finding exhibits that the first wave of the pandemic was more extreme in terms of the adverse price reaction than the second wave of the pandemic in the short term in the first five days. In the first wave, a more negative impact was on the Nifty50 index than the metal index. The firms in the metal and allied sectors experienced more negative price reactions than the metal index on the announcement of the lockdown event in the first wave. In the second wave, the impact was less than experienced by the firms in the first wave. We present the comparative empirical findings in daily and period-wise frequency to understand the effect of the 1st and 2nd waves of the pandemic on metal, mining, and its associated sectors in India. Our paper will contribute to the literature on extreme events and assist different stakeholders.