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Purpose This paper aims to investigate simultaneously the causality and the dynamic links between exchange rates and stock market indices. It attempts to identify the short- and long-term effect of the US dollar on major stock market indices of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South-Africa (BRICS) nations. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies a new methodology combining the panel generalized method of moments model and the panel auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) method to investigate the existence of a causal short-/long-run relationships and dynamic dependence among all stock market returns and exchanges rates changes of BRICS countries. Findings Results show that exchange rate changes have a significant effect on the past and the current volatility of the BRICS stock indices. Besides, ARDL estimations reveal that exchange rate movements have a significant effect on short- and long-term stocks market indices of all BRICS countries Originality/value The findings have implications for policymakers and market participants who try to manage the exchange rate will have a different dose of intervention if they know that the effects of currency depreciation are different than appreciation. These results have important implications that investors should take into account in frequency-varying exchange rates and stock returns and regulators should consider developing sound policy measures to prevent financial risk.

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This paper applies the mean-variance portfolio optimization (PO) approach and the stochastic dominance (SD) test to examine preferences for international diversification versus domestic diversification from American investors' viewpoints. Our PO results imply that the domestic diversification strategy dominates the international diversification strategy at a lower risk level and the reverse is true at a higher risk level. Our SD analysis shows that there is no arbitrage opportunity between international and domestic stock markets; domestically diversified portfolios with smaller risk dominate internationally diversified portfolios with larger risk and vice versa; and at the same risk level, there is no difference between the domestically and internationally diversified portfolios. Nonetheless, we cannot find any domestically diversified portfolios that stochastically dominate all internationally diversified portfolios, but we find some internationally diversified portfolios with small risk that dominate all the domestically diversified portfolios.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate whether Islamic indexes, Bitcoin and gold still act as hedges or/and “safe-haven” assets during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This paper examines the role of the Morgan Stanley Capital International all-country world index, Islamic index, gold and Bitcoin as a hedge or safe-haven asset for the world conventional stock market over the period from April 30, 2015 to March 27, 2020. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors re-evaluate the hedge and safe haven properties of Islamic indexes, gold and Bitcoin following Baur and Lucey’s (2010) and Baur and McDermott’s (2010) methodology. Findings Empirical results show that the Islamic index is not a hedge or a safe haven asset for the world conventional stock market during the recent coronavirus crisis period. Different from the whole period, the authors find that gold is a strong hedge but only a weak safe or is not a safe haven during the coronavirus sub-period. Bitcoin reports distinctive properties, as it acts as a weak hedge and not a safe-haven asset. Originality/value This paper is the first study that investigates whether the global Islamic index still acts as hedges or “safe-haven” assets during the new COVID-19 crisis period. The results can help investors make informed decisions when adding cryptocurrencies and Islamic indexes to their portfolios during the coronavirus crisis.