Reaction of Indian Stock Market to Outbreak of COVID-19: An Empirical Analysis of Extreme Inter-day Movements

The contagious COVID-19 pandemic has been considered a massive global crisis since World War II and has disturbed business and economic activities across the globe. The current study examined the reaction of the stock market’s to the outbreak of COVID-19, considering the extreme inter-day movements in the Indian stock market. The extreme inter-day movements in S&P CNX Nifty-50 have been identified during the study period from January 2020 to December 2021 and further classified into decline and gain events based on positive and negative announcements related to COVID-19. The study utilized an event study approach and panel regression for empirical investigation. The results of the event study analysis illustrate that the significant abnormal loss ranges from 12.86% to 2.47% for the major decline events and significant abnormal return from 8.43% to 3.23% for the gain events. The regression analysis results showed that real return and Central Bank Policy rate have a considerable impact on the abnormal returns during COVID-19. The study’s findings are helpful to policy implications that identified the need to focus on financial education and strengthen the health and finance-related policies to deal with such pandemics in the future.