The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Swedish Financial Market

Sammanfattning: The initial coronavirus disease caught the world by surprise at the end of 2019, as it was soon declared a pandemic. It led to an unexpected global crisis and profound disruption in societies and Sweden was no exception. The representing index OMXS30 took a steep fall in March 2020 and the market risk aversion increased in ways not seen since the financial crisis in 2008. The financial market has been extremely unpredictable ever since. Although, it has not yet been declared how the pandemic has influenced the financial market in Sweden. Therefore, this thesis aims to analyze how the quantitative epidemiological factors directly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic can be linked to the price fluctuations in the Swedish stock market - which, in this thesis, is represented by the OMXS30 index. By looking into the significance of these factors respectively, a potential hedging strategy could be determined. A multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine the relationship between OMXS30 and the epidemiological factors. These factors included: "the number of people in intensive care due to COVID-19", "the number of people infected by COVID-19", and "the number of deceased due to COVID-19". The results showed that the first regressor was of no significance to the model. However, the second and third regressor variables showed to have a strong significance in relation to the price fluctuations of the OMXS30 index. From this finding, an optimal hedging strategy was found. This strategy implies that one should take a long position in the stocks included in OMXS30 if the COVID-19 infection rate is predicted to increase, and contrary take a short position in these stocks if the mortality rate is prognosticated to rise.