Business Perspectives and Research, Ahead of Print.
COVID-19 quickly spread all over the world and dramatically affected the financial markets in almost everycountry. Its spread created havoc in the market, and investors fearing risk suffereda significant amount of financialloss in a very short time. This article aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on stock markets in the top six affected countries based on the total number of cases confirmed. In addition, it also analyzes the stock market volatility caused by the virus and the abnormal returns generated by the markets during the pandemic. We employevent study methodology in different sub-periods to examine the most volatile event periods with the daily rise in the Covid cases and subsequent returns generated by the markets during these sub-periodsin relation to the daily rise in the case. The increase in volatility and the presence of significant abnormal returns among the sample indices show the impact of COVID-19 on stock markets. The result reveals that Brazilian stock indices show the highest decline among the selected countries, with a fall of more than 50% during the pandemic, while Mexican indices show the lowest fall of around 30% during the same period.