THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON EXCHANGE RATE VOLATILITY: AN ECONOPHYSICS APPROACH

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the efficiency, in its weak form, between exchange rates, US-RMB, US-EUR, US-JPY, US-MYR, US-PHP, US-SGD, US-THB, US-CHF, US-GBP, in the period from July 1, 2019 to October 27, 2020. To perform this analysis, different approaches were undertaken to assess whether: (i) the impact of the global pandemic created long memories in international foreign exchange markets? The results of the exponents Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) show that the exchange rates US-THB (0.60), US-MYR (0.59), US-SGD (0. 59), present long memories, to a lesser extent the exchange pairs US-GBP (0.56), US-EUR (0.53). On the other side, exchange rates US-RMB (0. 47), US-JPY (0. 43), US-CHF (0. 46), US-PHP (0. 38) show anti persistence, while the Detrended cross-correlation coefficient (𝑝𝐷𝐶𝐶𝐴) results show 19 average correlation coefficients (≌ 0.333 → ≌ 0.666), 10 weak correlation coefficient (≌ 0,000 → ≌ 0.333), 7 strong non-trend cross correlation coefficients (0.666→ ≌ 1,000). In conclusion, we show that the exchange pairs analyzed show some predictability, that is, there are levels of arbitrage that can be explored by investors; we also found that the exchange rates analyzed have characteristics of diversification, due to the low autocorrelation between markets. The objective of this study was not to analyze abnormal profitability by investors without incurring additional risk.