The Impact of Covid-19 Spread on Stock Markets: The Case of the GCC Countries

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the effects of 2020 Covid-19 world-wide spread on stock markets of GCC countries. Coronavirus spread has been measured by cumulative cases, new cases, cumulative deaths and new deaths. Coronavirus spread has been measured by numbers per million of population, while stock market return is measured by Δ in stock market index. Papers conducted in this topic tend to analyze Coronavirus spread in the highly infected countries and focus on the developed stock markets. Countries with low level of infection that have emerging financial markets seem to be less attractive to scholars concerning with Coronavirus spread on stock markets. This is why we try to investigate the GCC stock markets reaction to Covid-19 spread.   Findings show that there are significant differences among stock market indices during the research period. Besides, stock market returns seem to be sensitive to Coronavirus new deaths. Moreover, this has been confirmed for March without any evidence about these effects during April and May 2020.