How do global financial markets react to the variants of the COVID-19?

Previous studies have explored the impact of COVID-19 on financial markets. However, it fails to examine the different variants of concerns (VOCs) of COVID-19 on financial markets. As these VOCs have varying severity on public health with heterogeneity in behaviour across stock markets of different geographies, our study analyses the effects of these VOCs such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron on the global financial markets. The study uses the ten most-affected countries’ stock market daily returns to examine the effects of the VOCs on the financial markets. The stock returns of Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the USA are negatively affected by the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, other variants of concern of the COVID-19 do not affect the global financial markets except for the Delta variant affecting the Brazilian Stock Market negatively. Unlike during the first wave of the pandemic which negatively affected the financial markets, the effects on global financial markets became subdued during the later phases of the pandemic.