Exchange Rate and Stock Markets During Trade Conflicts in the USA, China, and India

During trade tussles, most of the stock exchanges are impacted, both directly and indirectly, thereby influencing the exchange rates of the countries. This article gives a comprehensive insight into the effects of exchange rate on the USA, China, and Indian stock market, that is, the Dow Jones industrial average index (DJI), Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) composite index, and Nifty50 index during trade conflicts. Trade conflicts here talk about the recent trade war between the USA and China, which was invariably fallen in line with the outbreak of COVID-19. Sample of this study comprises the daily closing price from different indices and exchange rate values US dollar, yuan, and rupee. This article uses ordinary least square (OLS) model and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to analyze the volatility and influence of exchange rate over the stock market. Results from OLS model indicated that the fluctuations in exchange rate have minimum impact on the daily closing price of stock indices, that is, DJI, SSE, and Nifty50 in the USA, China, and India, respectively, however, exchange rate impacts volume of shares traded in all three stock exchanges. The GARCH model implies that the conditional variance is less volatile for Nifty volume, but highly volatile for SSE and DJI stock volumes traded. The findings of the study provide insights to the domestic and foreign investors regarding their investment in the stock market during trade conflicts and mostly during COVID-19 situation.