Coronavirus (COVID-19) - An epidemic or pandemic for financial markets

The novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has quickly evolved from a provincial health scare to a global meltdown. While it has brought nearly half the world to a standstill it has affected the financial markets in unseen ways by eroding a quarter of wealth in nearly a month. This paper investigates the reaction of financial markets globally in terms of their decline and volatility as Coronavirus epicentre moved from China to Europe and then to the US. Findings suggest that the earlier epicentre China has stabilized while the global markets have gone into a freefall especially in the later phase of the spread. Even the relatively safer commodities have suffered as the pandemic moves into the US. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.