Short-term Economic Indicators, Stock Market Indexes and Indian Oil and Gas Stocks Returns

Rama Krishna Yelamanchili

doi:10.46281/ijfb.v4i1.454

Rama Krishna Yelamanchili Associate Professor of Finance, Department of Finance and Accounting, ICFAI Business School, IFHE-Hyderabad, India

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46281/ijfb.v4i1.454

Keywords: Industrial Production, Oil Companies, Public Sector Undertakings, Predictive Analysis, Stock Markets.

Abstract

In this paper we examine the causal relationship between short term economic indicators, stock market indexes and oil and gas stocks returns. We postulate that economic indicators positively and significantly cause and predict stock market indexes and oil and gas stock returns in short run. In addition, we posit that stock market indexes cause and predict oil and gas stock returns in short run. To test our hypotheses we chose four short-term economic indicators, two stock market indexes, and 10 oil and gas companies. Our results indicate that there is no causal relationship between both short-term economic indicators and stock market indexes, and between short-term economic indicators and oil and gas stock returns. However, we receive support to one of our hypotheses that stock market indexes cause oil and gas stock returns. This causation is contemporaneous only and we observe that stock market indexes lack short-term predictive power of oil and gas stock returns. We conclude that investors need to be vigilant in considering coincident indicators as explanatory variables to predict stock returns. We suggest that stock market indexes are helpful to predict contemporaneous returns but not future returns of oil and gas stocks.

JEL Classification: B1, C32, D4, G2.

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