Unveiling asymmetric return spillovers with portfolio implications among Indian stock sectors during Covid-19 pandemic

This paper aims to provide a systematic inquiry into the return spillover dynamics between a network of Indian sectoral indices during the pre- and post-pandemic periods. To analyze the same, this paper uses the asymmetric time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VAR) framework. Furthermore, in the spirit of Broadstock et al. (2020), we perform dynamic portfolio exercises based on common hedging techniques and the minimum connectedness portfolio approach to determine what better captures asymmetry. Our daily dataset includes 12 sectoral stocks spanning from January 01, 2017, to May 5, 2023. The findings reveal that negative connectedness dominates throughout the sample period, demonstrating that profit-maximizing agents and risk-averse investors are more likely to react negatively to news. We also show that in the network, the average net transmitters are the banking and other financial service sectors, whereas the net receivers are the information technology, pharmaceutical, and fast-moving consumer goods sectors throughout the period under consideration. Our results show that the minimum connectedness portfolio (MCoP) approach is a very useful method based on Sharpe ratios, as it is either the first or second most profitable among these three competing methods. These results, therefore, yield valuable insights for policymakers and investors.