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ABSTRACT

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Indian economy in the recent past had experienced a volatile situation in its financial markets. Forex markets witnessed continuous weakening of rupee against dollar, followed by rise in crude oil prices, gold prices, inflation rate which made RBI to interfere with its hike in policy rates to curb the inflation. Effect of one market on another market is not a new thing, but the variations in the degree of impact and co-movements between the markets need to be examined. The main objective of this article is to study the causal relationship between oil, gold, forex and stock markets, for a period ranging from January 2005 till July 2015. This study employs the Granger causality test. The results indicate that the existence of only unidirectional relationship among the variables. The Granger causality test reveals that oil prices contribute towards development and forecasting of exchange rate and gold prices, whereas fluctuations in oil prices are granger caused by Sensex.

Market liquidity ensures the marketability of security and is an indispensable feature of stock markets. Previous studies have emphasized the role of stock market liquidity in empirical finance. However, they have inadequately explored its multidimensional nature. This study eliminates the ambiguities related to market liquidity by precisely measuring it by using popular and proven liquidity measures. As such, the present study aims to evaluate market liquidity in terms of depth, breadth, tightness, and immediacy in the Indian equity market and also identifies crucial interdependencies between liquidity dimensions. The study selects 500 stocks constituting the NIFTY 500 index of the National Stock Exchange, India, as of 26th May 2019. The data on trading volume, bid price, ask price, the number of shares outstanding, closing share prices were retrieved for the period from 1st April 2009 to 31st March 2019. The study employs Share Turnover, Amihud Illiquidity Ratio, Relative Quoted Spreads, and Coefficient of Elasticity of Trading for liquidity measurement. The Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) model is used to establish the simultaneous relationships between liquidity dimensions. The analysis is conducted at the aggregate market level as well as across turnover based stock groups divided based on their rankings in terms of stock specific share turnover. The empirical results evidenced the presence of consistent depth, strong breadth, and immediacy but lower tightness in the Indian equity market. The market depth and tightness appear to be relevant in determining dimensional interdependencies. Also, less frequently traded stocks exhibit higher illiquidity in the wake of lower tightness. The findings of this study will assist the investors to wisely understand the multifaceted nature of market liquidity and base their trading decisions accordingly. Moreover, the regulators of the stock exchange can devise liquidity enhancing policies based on the directional movements among liquidity dimensions.