Dynamic inflation hedging performance and downside risk: A comparison between Islamic and conventional stock indices

Inflation has attained the highest level in decades, with the Russian/Ukrainian war adding upward pressure on prices of energy and food. The recent war has exacerbated the already growth of consumer prices resulting from the COVID-19 and disrupted supply-chains. In a high-inflation environment where investors face inflationary pressures during their investment decision-making, it becomes increasingly important to diversify portfolios towards assets with potential inflation hedging abilities. This paper applies the dependence-switching copula and different dynamic downside risk measures to assess the role of Islamic stocks as a hedge for inflation, in comparison to their conventional counterparts. We use data for the period January 2000–October 2022, covering the periods prior to and post-COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. We consider an investor simply wishing to hedge inflation (or a “safety first” investor) and an investor having a more ambitious target real return. For each of the investor targets, we identify the optimal portfolio composition depending on various scenarios. Prior to the pandemic and the Ukraine conflict, Islamic stock indices exhibit the best hedging properties under their bull states, extreme inflation episodes and for an investor willing just to protect against inflation. In considering the post-2020 concerns, Islamic stocks’ diversification potentials are going to be more relevant, reinforcing their strategic benefits as risk mitigation assets. But by increasing the target of real return, it is shown that the weight assigned to the Islamic equities in the portfolio is smaller relative to the conventional stocks. The fund managers and financial analysts can rely on these findings in order to help investors reach a well-diversified portfolio and achieve an optimal risk reduction in an inflationary environment.