No abstract

Many studies have associated cryptocurrencies with bubbles, especially during stressed market conditions such as the recent outbreak of the second wave of COVID‐19. Although the majority of studies have focused on Bitcoin, we investigate the predictability of bubble formation in the cryptocurrency market by using the log‐periodic power law and we uncover some important stylized facts of this market. Our sample consists of data for a selection of 15 cryptocurrencies for the period between 1 January 2021 and 1 September 2021 which coincides with the second wave of COVID‐19. We analyse 86 speculative bubbles, and we find that the cryptocurrency market has three times higher drawdown over equities during stressed market conditions.

Documenting the interlinkages among assets that are widely used to hedge against inflation is crucial for investors, as the necessity to protect the investment portfolio is stronger under inflationary conditions. For this purpose, we investigate the volatility spillovers between treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) and a battery of other assets perceived as inflation hedges, including bonds, gold, real estate, oil and equities. The applied methodology comprehends the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) extension of the Diebold and Yilmaz (Int J Forecast 28:57–66, 2012, 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2011.02.006) approach for the period 1/1/2010–3/31/2022. Our results indicate that the assets under consideration are moderately interconnected and subjected to several exogenous shocks, such as the US–China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Furthermore, we assess the hedging effectiveness of TIPS against each asset by estimating hedge ratios and optimal portfolios weights, before and after the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, by using conditional variance estimations (DCC-GARCH). The empirical findings show that the short position in the volatility of TIPS is proved to be an excellent hedge for all the sampled assets, with the exception of short-term Treasury bonds, and their hedging ability was improved during COVID-19.