IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v147y2023ics037842662100337x.html

Stock valuation during the COVID-19 pandemic: An explanation using option-based discount rates

Author

Listed:
  • Berkman, Henk
  • Malloch, Hamish

Abstract

Changes in short-term expected market returns (discount rates) were a significant driver behind the unprecedented fluctuations in equity markets during the first 4 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using option-based estimates of the expected market risk premium for 13 international markets, we find that approximately 40% of the change in market values during the COVID-19 pandemic can be attributed to changes in short-term discount rates. We also document sharply downward sloping term structures of equity risk premia at the start of the pandemic, consistent with Hasler and Marfè (2016). Finally, we document a significant increase in the correlation between index returns and changes in the short-term discount rate during the pandemic compared to the period before the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Berkman, Henk & Malloch, Hamish, 2023. "Stock valuation during the COVID-19 pandemic: An explanation using option-based discount rates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:147:y:2023:i:c:s037842662100337x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106386
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842662100337X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106386?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ian Martin, 2017. "What is the Expected Return on the Market?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(1), pages 367-433.
    2. Long Chen & Zhi Da & Richard Priestley, 2012. "Dividend Smoothing and Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(10), pages 1834-1853, October.
    3. Ian W. R. Martin & Christian Wagner, 2019. "What Is the Expected Return on a Stock?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(4), pages 1887-1929, August.
    4. Jules van Binsbergen & Michael Brandt & Ralph Koijen, 2012. "On the Timing and Pricing of Dividends," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1596-1618, June.
    5. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia & Dilip Madan, 2003. "Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 101-143.
    6. Augustin Landier & David Thesmar, 2020. "Earnings Expectations in the COVID Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27160, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Cejnek, Georg & Randl, Otto & Zechner, Josef, 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Corporate Dividend Policy," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(7), pages 2389-2410, November.
    8. Hasler, Michael & Marfè, Roberto, 2016. "Disaster recovery and the term structure of dividend strips," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 116-134.
    9. Niels Joachim Gormsen & Ralph S J Koijen & Nikolai Roussanov, 0. "Coronavirus: Impact on Stock Prices and Growth Expectations," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 574-597.
    10. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni & Loudis, Johnathan, 2020. "The conditional expected market return," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(3), pages 752-786.
    11. P. Carr & D. Madan, 2001. "Optimal positioning in derivative securities," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 19-37.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Huang, Hao & Zhao, Ling, 2024. "Does digital innovation help firms navigate the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Ülkü, Numan & Ali, Fahad & Saydumarov, Saidgozi & İkizlerli, Deniz, 2023. "COVID caused a negative bubble. Who profited? Who lost? How stock markets changed?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Angelo Aspris & Ester Félez‐Viñas & Sean Foley & Hamish Malloch & Jiri Svec, 2024. "The market risk premium in Australia: Forward‐looking evidence from the options market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 3951-3972, December.
    4. Konstantinos Petridis & Nikolaos Kiosses & Ioannis Tampakoudis & Fouad Ben Abdelaziz, 2023. "Measuring the efficiency of mutual funds: Does ESG controversies score affect the mutual fund performance during the COVID-19 pandemic?," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 1-29, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angelo Aspris & Ester Félez‐Viñas & Sean Foley & Hamish Malloch & Jiri Svec, 2024. "The market risk premium in Australia: Forward‐looking evidence from the options market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 3951-3972, December.
    2. Aspris, Angelo & Malloch, Hamish & Svec, Jiri, 2024. "Option implied dividends and the market risk premium," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(PB).
    3. Li, Ye & Wang, Chen, 2025. "The Information Cliff," SocArXiv bf8cx_v1, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ohad Kadan & Fang Liu & Xiaoxiao Tang, 2024. "Recovering Implied Volatility," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(1), pages 255-282, January.
    5. Michael Hasler & Alexandre Jeanneret, 2023. "A Macrofinance Model for Option Prices: A Story of Rare Economic Events," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(9), pages 5543-5559, September.
    6. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni & Loudis, Johnathan, 2020. "The conditional expected market return," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(3), pages 752-786.
    7. Altan Pazarbaşı & Paul Schneider & Grigory Vilkov, 2024. "Dispersion of Beliefs Bounds: Sentimental Recovery," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(12), pages 8284-8300, December.
    8. Golez, Benjamin & Kelly, Peter & Matthies, Ben, 2025. "What does the equity term structure tell us about Trump 2.0′s first 100 days in office?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    9. Yamazaki, Akira, 2025. "Subjective probability distributions of nonlinear payoffs: Recovering option payoff, agent’s utility, and pricing kernel distributions," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Wang, Yunqi & Zhou, Ti, 2023. "Out-of-sample equity premium prediction: The role of option-implied constraints," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 199-226.
    11. Wang, Shikun & Zhu, Shushang & Huang, Yi & Li, Zhongfei, 2024. "Estimation of expected return integrating real-time asset prices implied information and historical data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    12. Bollerslev, Tim & Todorov, Viktor, 2023. "The jump leverage risk premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(3).
    13. Ian W.R. Martin, 2025. "Information in Derivatives Markets: Forecasting Prices with Prices," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 17(1), pages 295-319, November.
    14. Fousseni Chabi-Yo & Johnathan A. Loudis, 2024. "A Decomposition of Conditional Risk Premia and Implications for Representative Agent Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(10), pages 6804-6834, October.
    15. Ye Li & Chen Wang, 2023. "Valuation Duration of the Stock Market," Papers 2310.07110, arXiv.org.
    16. Benjamin Knox, 2022. "A Stock Return Decomposition Using Observables," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-014r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 31 Jan 2025.
    17. Fousseni Chabi-Yo & Chukwuma Dim & Grigory Vilkov, 2023. "Generalized Bounds on the Conditional Expected Excess Return on Individual Stocks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(2), pages 922-939, February.
    18. Bekaert, Geert & Hoerova, Marie & Xu, Nancy, 2023. "Risk, Monetary Policy and Asset Prices in a Global World," CEPR Discussion Papers 18229, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    19. Geert Bekaert & Eric C. Engstrom & Nancy R. Xu, 2022. "The Time Variation in Risk Appetite and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 3975-4004, June.
    20. Marfè, Roberto & Pénasse, Julien, 2024. "Measuring macroeconomic tail risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:147:y:2023:i:c:s037842662100337x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.