The Impacts of Oil Prices, Exchange Rate and COVID-19 Pandemic on BIST Petrochemical Market

Abstract

Stock markets are developing with the economic growth of the countries in a liberal market economy. Petrochemicals is an indicator of the performance of the country's industry with high inter-industry linkage by providing input to several sectors, producing various outputs with a certain number of raw materials. The COVID-19 pandemic period has affected all markets worldwide and caused fluctuations in the index values of large firms in the petrochemical industry in Borsa Istanbul (BIST). This study analyzes the impact of the pandemic period and change in the oil prices and exchange rate on the petrochemical market in Turkey. The monthly data of petrochemical stock market index, exchange rate, oil prices are used in this time series analysis. A pandemic information index representing the COVID-19 pandemic was derived and included in the model. According to the results, it is observed that the most important determinant of the fluctuations on the BIST petrochemical index is the oil prices. While a shock in oil prices negatively affects the BIST petrochemical index, the petrochemical index responds positively to the shock in the pandemic index.