ABSTRACT
This research aims to determine the impact of COVID-19 on the stock markets of Pakistan (Islamabad), China (Shanghai), and the United States of America (New York). These three stock markets were chosen to demonstrate the variation in the degree of influence based on varied times in which the respective nations were impacted by COVID-19. COVID-19, a pandemic virus, was still present in China in December 2020. The one-year timeline helps us understand the pattern of the effect on different stock markets that show onward to guide us to indicate that in this situation, the lack of economic movement (due to the lockdown) had a more negative effect on stock prices than the increase in the number of new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus. This study was carried out to assess the influence of COVID-19 on the financial sectors, including the stock market. The effects were assessed by employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) to demonstrate correlations between three stock markets (Pakistan, Shanghai, and New York) and COVID-19 instances. The study's major goal is to demonstrate the differences in the three countries' levels of influence. We got empirical results and discovered that the confirmed cases had a detrimental influence on three stock exchanges. However, all three countries saw an increase in the number of recovery cases. The number of deaths was minor for Pakistan and China but had a detrimental impact on the New York Stock Exchange.