UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS FACULTY OF BANKING AND FINANCE THE IMPACTS OF GEOPOLITICAL RISKS ON THE POSSIBILITY OF HERDING BEHAVIOR IN VIETNAM’S STOCK MARKET IN THE PERIOD 2015-2020 INSTRUCTOR : MSC. PHAM THE THANH STUDENT : HOANG THI HAI YEN STUDENT CODE : 19050782 CLASS : QH-2019-E TCNH CLC 1 FACULTY : FINANCE AND BANKING Ha Noi, 2023. DECLARATION I hereby declare that the graduation thesis “The impacts of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in Vietnam's stock market in the period 2015 - 2020" is an independent scientific research work personally under the guidance of MSc. Pham The Thanh.
I guarantee that the contents presented in the thesis are truthful, have citations and have clear sources, the data is collected objectively. The research results have not been previously published by anyone except for some results published in the author's own scientific works. Student Hoang Thi Hai Yen ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For today's results, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my instructor - MSc. Pham The Thanh enthusiastically supported, encouraged and gave me valuable advice and suggestions during the time I was working on this thesis.
I am extremely grateful to him for guiding, motivating and supporting me to carry out valuable academic work. Along with the career of growing people, I always remember his gratitude. I would also like to express my gratitude to the teachers of the Faculty of Banking and Finance and University of Economics (UEB) - Vietnam National University (VNU) for their dedication in teaching and imparting knowledge and experience during my study period practice at the school and create the best conditions to help me complete this graduation thesis. Thank you sincerely.
Student Hoang Thi Hai Yen TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. - - G1 nHT HT HH TH HT HT TH 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. QnnnHg ng nh HT hệt 2 L9). 6 LIST OF TABLES.
- (ng TH TH TH TH TH TH 6 CHAPTER 1.-- -- - G0 1T TH HH HH kh 7 1.1 Rationable of Research 'T0pÏC.-- c1 TT HH TH nh 8 1.-- - --- 1 1S ST HH HH kh 9 1.4 Research objectives and SCODe.- G ng HH HH kh 9 1.5 Overview of data and research methods .6 Contribution of researrCHh. - óc 1n TH TH TH ng ng ke 10 1. -- ch TH TH HH nh tre 10 1.- - - «+ ktnn nntnn nnnn H n nn ke 11 1.7 Structure of the research .1 Theoretical baSÌÏS.-- - - Gà 1n ng HH HH 13 2.1 Theoretical basis of herding behaViOrF.2 Theoretical basis of geopolitical rÌSÌKS.- - - -- x1 vn ng kg 14 2.2 Research OVe€TVÏ©W.- - - LH TH HH HT TH TH kh 15 2.1 Impacts of herding behavior on the stock market.2 Impacts of geopolitical risks on the financial market.3 The research 2aps .-- Án HH HH kg 23 CHAPTER 3.-- - - GB HH ng krt 24 3.1 Research model and testing hypothesSÌs.1 Test 1: The existence of herding behavior in the Vietnam’s stock market.1 Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation MOE] .3 Rolling windOW q'ìQ]SÏS.2 Test 2: The impact of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in Vietnam’s Stock Market 0111 .2 Data collection and proCeSSÏnB.2 Sample and Variables .-- -- s11 TH ng ng kệ 32 CHAPTER 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.- - Gv *n ng nHnHkHkhkg 34 4.-- - - G6 1n TH TH HH HH Hhn 34 4.1 Test 1: The existence of herding behavior in Vietnam's Stock Market in the period 2015-2020.2 Determine structural break by Bai-Perron (2003) method.3 Rolling Window anaÌySÌS.
-- - -- kg HH HH ngu 37 4.4 Test 2: The impact of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in Vietnam's Stock Market in the period 2015-20220.2 M Lai )00(Vrrdđiii. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. Summary of research results and Recommendations .2 Limitations of the present study and directions for future research .- Ặ- - Q HH nh 45 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 Volatility of Vietnam's stock market in the period 2015-2020.2 Recent GPR Index from 1985.3 Daily GPR Index from 2015 to 2020.1 Rolling t-statistics test results. 38 LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 CSAD model test results.2 Bai-Perron (2003) structural break test results.3 Probit Model test results.1 Rationable of Research Topic Traditional financial theories are often based on the Effective Market Hypothesis (EMH), which holds that all information coming to a business is instantly reflected in the price of a security (or more broadly, financial assets), that is, prices fully reflect all available information, making it impossible for investors to generate abnormal returns using publicly available information (Fama, 1970).
In practice, however, traditional finance assumptions cannot explain stock market anomalies such as the January Effect, the "sell in May" effect, the Day of the Week Effect, or asset bubbles that lead to stock market crashes, and empirical research (Bashir et al., 2013) also revealed that investor behaviors are not always as rational as described. Thus, behavioral finance was created to fill the fundamental gaps of traditional finance with the assumption that financial asset prices are not always driven by reasonable expectations of future investment returns, by human reality in general and market participants in particular are entities of emotion, not just rationality. Therefore, researching behavioral finance and its impact on financial markets are necessary additions to traditional financial assumptions. For Vietnam's stock market, according to data from the Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD), in April 2022, the number of new trading accounts opened by domestic individual investors was nearly 231,000.
Accumulated by the end of April 2022, the number of investor accounts in Vietnam market officially exceeded 5. It can be seen that the number of newly opened individual investor accounts is a record high, however, they are generally not very experienced and financial knowledge, information is not fully grasped and updated, professionalism and discipline are not available when participating in the market. Therefore, the influence of psychological factors on investment decisions becomes even more pronounced. In particular, herding behavior is one of the popular psychological trends of the market, shown through the strong reactions of the market to information related to businesses, politics.
These phenomena appear even in financial markets in developed countries (fluctuations of Dow Jones, S&P500 before events related to the Ukraine war). In the context of a volatile world and heightened geopolitical risks, it is understandable that financial markets are affected. News about geopolitical risks often reduces asset values (Caldara &; Iacoviello, 2022), increases volatility (Chau, Deesomasak, & Wang, 2014) and negatively impacts investor emotions and behavior (Nikkinen & Vahamaa, 2010), to varying degrees depending on the nature of each specific geopolitical risk (Karolyi & Martell, 2006). However, almost no research has been conducted towards studying the impact of geopolitical risks on the psychology of investors, specifically herding behavior, which can be seen as the driving force behind major market movements.
The above research gap and practical urgency have prompted me to conduct quantitative studies on “The impact of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in the Vietnam’s stock market”. Examining the impact of geopolitical risks on the emergence of investor crowd sentiment in financial markets can therefore contribute to academic gaps in the relevant field, while also having important practical implications for investors, fund management, as well as State management agencies to stabilize the economy and society in the context of heightened geopolitical risks.2 Research objectives - General objective: The general objective of my thesis is to study the impacts of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in the Vietnam’s stock market. - Specific objectives: From the general research objective orientation, my thesis is implemented with 4 specific goals as follows: e Applying the Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation model (CSAD) to test the existence of herding behavior in Vietnam's stock market. e Structural break verification using the method of Bai & Perron (2003) and rolling window analysis to determine when and whether the change was significant in the study data.
e Apply the probit regression model to study the impact of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in Vietnam's stock market. e Based on the research results to propose recommendations.3 Research questions The research will focus on finding the answer to three questions: - Is there herding behavior in Vietnam's stock market in the period 2015-2020? - Is there a structural break in Vietnam's stock market in the period 2015-2020? - Is there an impact of geopolitical risks on the possibility of herding behavior in the Vietnam’s stock market on VN30 index in the period 2015-2020? 1.4 Research objectives and scope Research objectives: geopolitical risks to the possibility of herding behavior among individual investors in the Vietnamese stock market. Research scope: Vietnam stock market with VN30 index and stocks on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) from 27/01/2015 to 31/12/2019.5 Overview of data and research methods Research period: from 27/01/2015 to 31/12/2019. The purpose of collecting data for this period is so that we can clearly see the impact of geopolitical risks and the existence of herding behavior before 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet appeared in Vietnam.
Research sample: shares of companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE). All transaction data was collected at Fiinpro before COVID-19. Research methodology: e With the stated research objective, to quantify the presence and extent of herding behavior in Vietnam's stock market, the research uses the method of cross sectional absolute standard deviation (CSAD). This is the method proposed by Chang, Cheng and Khorana (2000) and supplemented by Tan et al.
(2008), at the same time used mainly in research of herding behavior. Chang, Cheng and Khorana (2000) argue that in normal times, the level of investor crowds present in the market and nonvolatile markets, stronger crowd levels will increase market yield volatility and the relationship will shift from linear to non-linear. Thus, the CSAD model is commonly used to measure and test current herd behavior with the distribution of market returns (Youssef and Mokni, 2018; Chang et al., 2020; Chong et al. e Using Eviews 8 software, structural break determination by the method of Bai & Perron (2003) and rolling window analysis in the CSAD model to check the stability of the model.
e Toassess the influence of geopolitical risks on herding behavior in the market, the research uses a probit regression model. The probit regression model is a non- linear model that uses a binary dependent variable to estimate the probability that an event will occur with the information of the independent variable that I obtain. The variable depends on herding behavior synthesized from the results of the CSAD model. The independent variable is derived by date from the set of GPR metrics.
e The Geopolitical Risk Index (GPR) was formulated by Caldara and Iacoviello (2022) by counting the frequency of GPR-related articles, based on 10 national and international newspapers.6 Contribution of research 1.1 Scientific contributions Add a study on behavioral psychology in the stock market, specifically herding behavior, a topic with high application and practical significance for investors in Vietnam. Adding a study on the impact of geopolitical risks, in the context of the volatile world political situation. Previous research papers on political risk focused on assessing the impact ofthis risk on stock yields or the price offinancial assets such as stocks, bonds, and oil prices. But there is very few researchs aimed at studying the effects of geopolitical risks on investor sentiment.2 Practical contributions - The results provide new empirical evidence on the impact of political instability on investor sentiment in Vietnam's stock market.
- The results of the study are convincing evidence on which to propose policy implications for the country and the Government. Policymakers should be cautious of the impact of geopolitical risks and external environmental shocks on investor sentiment. From there, it is possible to introduce management policies, transparency of old information such as minimizing volatility and the possibility of financial market disruption.