Multivariate Analysis of COVID-19 on Stock, Commodity & Purchase Manager Indices: A Global Perspective

Abstract The whole world is going through an unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 leading to huge economy disruption across the globe. Moreover, the alarming pace of COVID-19 is quite upsetting to the leading financial stakeholders as it has resulted in the fleeing away of the customers, investors, and foreign trading partners. Resultantly, global markets succumbed leading to erosion of more than the US $6 trillion within just one week in February 2020. During the same week, alone S&P 500 index also experienced a loss of more than $5 trillion value in the US. This manuscript attempts to perform multivariate analysis of the global economy during the COVID-19 period. An empirical evaluation of the effect of containment policies on financial activity, stock market indices, purchasing manager index and commodity prices are also carried out. The obtained results reveal that the number of lockdown days, overseas travel ban and fiscal stimulus significantly influence the economic activity.