The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Financial Markets: Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries` Stock Markets Indexes

In this study, we investigate the stock markets’ reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak. For this purpose, we collected daily cumulative confirmed cases, cumulative deaths, and stock index price data from Australia, Germany, Japan, UK, USA, Brazil, China, Malaysia, South Africa, and Turkey over the period from March 11, 2020, to December 31, 2020, and examined using multiple and panel data regression. Findings reveal that the cumulative daily infection cases have a significant negative impact on the entire and first sub-period covering from March 11 to June 30, 2020. However, this negative impact of cumulative infection cases on the stock market was significant only among developed countries. In contrast, the cumulative death rate was not a fundamental factor that explains stock market price changes. The result also indicated that exchange rate has a significant negative impact on both developed and developing countries’ stock markets. The overall findings of the study indicated that COVID-19 outbreak has a negative significant impact on stock markets and this impact continue until the end of the 2020 second quarter and then the impact became insignificant. Besides, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was different in developed and developing countries and even different from country to country.