Measuring and analyzing the relationship between the volatility of US stock market indices and the volatility of oil prices

Abstract

The volatility of the financial markets and the oil market plays a major role in influencing macroeconomic activity, as well as the high interaction between the both markets and the remarkable sensitivity to their each other fluctuations which cause the undesirable impact on other economic sectors as an expected result due the mentioned interaction.

The study aimed to analyze the relationship between the volatility of the major US market indices represented by the DJIA index, S & P500, due to their comprehensiveness of the financial market, as they summarize the performance of the entire US market which is the largest economy in the world, as well as the difference in the calculation mechanism, and oil market benchmarks: West Intermediate Texas(WTI), Brent and Dubai, using a monthly data for the period 1990-2016. The data were integrated at the first rank, which encouraged the researchers to run the Johansson and Juselius model in order to explore the Cointegration relationship between the variables, causality test, along with Vector Error Correction Model - VECM.

The study found an important relationship between The volatility of financial markets indices and volatility of crude oil prices. in one part, it was characterized by the causal influence between the S & P 500 index and the Oil benchmarks. Meanwhile, the volatility of the DJIA index has had an important impact on the formation of long-term volatility in crude oil prices.