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Highlights A decline of market capital from Covid-19 will increase the default likelihood. The mining, construction and retail sectors are most vulnerable to market shock. Given a moderate deterioration in economic profile, a tax deferral is sufficient. For exacerbating shocks, debt and equity support is essential to avoid a meltdown.

The likelihood of pandemics has been perceived very low till very recently. Therefore, the exponential spread of Covid-19 was a major surprise that has resulted in a global rout of financial markets. In this study, we document some preliminary evidence of performance and investment styles of European funds during the evolution of Covid-19. We assess the period between January and May 2020 and categorized the spread of contagion in three phases. The results document that Social Entrepreneurship funds demonstrated positive returns across the three phases, while most of the other subcategories plunged into negative zone. Our findings on style analysis suggest that fund managers have been drifting from high risk option to low risk in terms of size and investment strategy. Similarly, there has been a switch from high risk to relatively less sensitive sectors and a transition of investment from countries with higher to those with lower number of cases.

The mutual funds’ returns, inter alia, are dependent on fund managers’ performance. This makes human capital efficiency very central for consistent risk-adjusted performance. The persistence in performance becomes more critical during periods of high turbulence, like the one we are experiencing amidst the outbreak of Covid-19. In this research, we attempt to evaluate the performance of equity funds in massively impacted Latin American countries. These equity funds, with 95% of their investment in the infected region, are ranked as per their human capital efficiency using 2019 as the base year. Our findings demonstrate that funds with higher human capital efficiency significantly outperform their counterparts that rank lower on human capital efficiency. These findings remained consistent for the sub-periods that we specify to map the evolution of Covid-19. We conclude that equity funds should enhance their human capital efficiency to endure resilience amid macroeconomic shocks.

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This paper analyses the risk-adjusted performance of Islamic and conventional equity funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that Islamic equity funds demonstrated differentials in risk-adjusted performance, investment styles, and volatility timing compared to their conventional counterparts. Specifically, the results revealed that Islamic equity funds are more resilient to COVID-19 shock since they outperformed non-Islamic peers during the peak months of the pandemic. The trend continues even when the spread smoothens. These findings confirm the safe-haven properties of Islamic equity funds, which is helpful for investors aiming to hedge pandemic risks. The style analysis reveals investment drift from riskier styles to more prudent options in response to each stage's uncertainties. The results suggest policymakers should further investigate Islamic financial assets and their underlying principles to improve the resilience of economic systems in any future black swan events.

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