Stock market comovements: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic shock has harmed the US and East Asian stock markets. Focusing on measuring the inherent correlation, this paper employs a GARCH-Copula CoVaR approach to address the debate on the extreme risk spillovers from the US to China, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea stock returns. The results show a large spillover effect from the US to East Asian stock markets. Compared to the tranquil period, these spillovers become stronger in the COVID-19 period. The findings show that indirect spillovers on the Chinese stock market are heavier than direct spillovers, and impacts deluge only via Hong Kong. The study contrasts spillover’ features of the US COVID-19 shock and the Chinese 2015 crisis. These findings provide useful support for policymakers and risk managers involved in the East Asian stock markets.