Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis on The Impact of COVID-19 in Some Major Industrial Sectors in India

Abstract

COVID-19 is the largest pandemic outbreak since the Spanish flu more than a century age. This pandemic has affected every aspect of our lives, from microscopic levels to macroscopic levels. One such effect is the severe impact of the novel coronavirus on the economy and the financial markets. This research project is to study the impact of the pandemic on the Indian economy and study how COVID-19 statistics effect the economy in financial terms. The purpose of this study was to compare stock price returns in the time period leading up to the COVID-19 induced lockdowns and COVID-19 periods. For the scope of this research, we have limited our study to three sectors vis-à-vis Automobile, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) & Pharmaceutical Sectors. In these sectors the top 5 companies on the basis of market capitalization are taken. Daily data of COVID-19 is taken from John Hopkins University, Coronavirus Resource Centre. The financial datasets have been taken from National Stock Exchange (NSE). We have analyzed stock prices return data & attempted to fit statistical distributions like Cauchy, Logistic & Normal Distributions. We found that in most of the cases a Cauchy model seems to be best fits the data.