Title: Credit for equity investment and stock market volatility: evidence of variance causality

Authors: Ibrahim A. Onour

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, School of Management Studies, University of Khartoum, P.O. Box 321, Khartoum, Sudan

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal relationship between stock market price changes and banks' loans for equity investment in Saudi capital markets using Granger's causality test and cross-correlation function (CCF) of standardised residuals. The findings in the paper show that the mean causality between the two capital markets is insignificant whereas the variance causality is significant. This result implies that the effect of news transmission between the two markets has no significant impact on these markets, but there is significant evidence of volatility transmission between the two markets. This means that public information (or news) held by the market participants has insignificant impact on stock price change but unexpected shocks on either market have significant spillover effects. A policy implication of such finding is that to contain irregular surprise shocks on Saudi stock market it is required stronger surveillance on portfolio managers' speculative and manipulative behaviour.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia; stock market volatility; speculation; manipulation; bank credit; stock markets; equity investment; variance causality; price changes; bank loans; unexpected shocks; spillover effects; surveillance; portfolio management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEF.2015.072339

International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance, 2015 Vol.8 No.3, pp.265 - 273

Received: 25 Jun 2014
Accepted: 04 May 2015
Published online: 09 Oct 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article