Transportation industries during the COVID-19 pandemic: stock market performance of the largest listed companies

Abstract

The paper aims to identify the differences in stock prices’ rate of return of companies from transportation industries in 2020, i.e., the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the largest companies by market capitalization from airlines, logistics and air freight, marine, rail, and road industries, using Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). We use Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) to identify the company profile. We conduct the analysis on average weekly rates of return based on daily market prices and use data from Refinitiv Datastream and Yahoo Finance. Based on ANOVA, we confirm that the stock market performance of the largest companies during the COVID-19 pandemic is industry-specific and varies among transportation industries. Moreover, based on descriptive statistics and Tukey Multiple Comparison test (Tukey’s HSD), we reveal that the airlines is the transportation industry that is the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.