As the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic rages globally, its impact has been felt in the stock markets around the world. Amidst the gloomy economic outlook, certain sectors seem to have survived better than others. This paper aims to investigate the sectors that have performed better even as market sentiment is affected by the pandemic. The daily closing stock prices of a total usable sample of 1,567 firms from 37 sectors are first analyzed using a combination of hierarchical clustering and shape-based distance (SBD) measures. Market sentiment is modeled from Google Trends on the COVID-19 pandemic. This is then analyzed against the time series of daily closing stock prices using augmented vector autoregression (VAR). The empirical results indicate that market sentiment towards the pandemic has significant effects on the stock prices of the sectors. Particularly, the stock price performance across sectors is differentiated by the level of the digital transformation of sectors, with those that are most digitally transformed, showing resilience towards negative market sentiment on the pandemic. This study contributes to the existing literature by incorporating search trends to analyze market sentiment, and by showing that digital transformation moderated the stock market resilience of firms against concern over the COVID-19 outbreak.

中文翻译：

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通过数字化转型建立股市弹性：使用 Google 趋势分析 COVID-19 大流行的影响

随着 2019 年新型冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 大流行在全球肆虐，世界各地的股票市场都感受到了其影响。在经济前景黯淡的情况下，某些行业似乎比其他行业生存得更好。本文旨在调查在市场情绪受到大流行影响的情况下表现较好的行业。首先使用层次聚类和基于形状的距离 (SBD) 措施的组合分析了来自 37 个行业的 1,567 家公司的总可用样本的每日收盘股价。市场情绪是根据谷歌趋势对 COVID-19 大流行进行建模的。然后使用增强向量自回归 (VAR) 对每日收盘股票价格的时间序列进行分析。实证结果表明，市场对大流行的情绪对行业的股价有显着影响。尤其是跨行业股价表现因行业数字化转型水平而异，其中数字化转型程度最高的行业表现出对大流行负面市场情绪的抵御能力。这项研究通过结合搜索趋势来分析市场情绪，并通过表明数字化转型缓和了公司对 COVID-19 爆发的担忧的股票市场弹性，为现有文献做出了贡献。显示出对大流行的负面市场情绪的韧性。这项研究通过结合搜索趋势来分析市场情绪，并通过表明数字化转型缓和了公司对 COVID-19 爆发的担忧的股票市场弹性，为现有文献做出了贡献。显示出对大流行的负面市场情绪的韧性。这项研究通过结合搜索趋势来分析市场情绪，并通过表明数字化转型缓和了公司对 COVID-19 爆发的担忧的股票市场弹性，为现有文献做出了贡献。