COVID-19 Pandemic, Stimulus Packages and Stock Returns in Vietnam

This paper investigates the impacts of COVID-19's new cases and stimulus packages on the daily stock returns of five key economic sectors (Finance, Fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG), Healthcare, Oil and Gas, and Telecommunication) in Vietnam – one of the best countries in the world for handling COVID-19. The research team uses the Pool OLS method, with the panel data of 11 342 observations from 107 listed firms in these five sectors in the period January-June 2020. The key findings are (i) all sectors' stock returns are negatively affected by daily new confirmed cases of COVID-19, the hardest hit is on the financial sector, followed by FMCG, healthcare, oil and gas, and telecommunications sectors. Vietnam did not have many affected cases, but low average income makes investors and consumers more careful and hesitate to spend/invest; (ii) in contrast to prior studies, stimulus packages did not accelerate the growth of stock returns in all sectors, with the order from most to least negatively affected: finance, oil and gas, telecommunication, healthcare, and FMCG. The slow implementation made investors skeptical of the growth potential of firms, they assess the stimulus packages as the signs of economic downturn. This fact leads to different recommendations for the Vietnamese Government in combating COVID-19.