Behaviour of Islamic and Socially Responsible Indices in Crisis Period (COVID19): Case of Emerging Markets

The COVID-19 was an unexpected health crisis that propagated into several countries as a result of globalization, where it was quickly transmitted to the stock markets by decreasing value, and the same thing was observed since the 2007–2008 subprime crisis. These crises are without doubt part of the undesirable effects of the stock markets since they negatively impact their behaviour, although the developed markets are less affected than emerging markets by the effects of crises reflecting on their growth, and in our case study (COVID19) health crise. It’s in this context that during this period several indices that attempt to replicate the performance of a market move downwards as well as upwards, hence the need to understand this behaviour in particular during this period. As traditional indices, ethical indices appeared in the 1980s and developed until the 1990s, where they are defined as a subset of their traditional benchmarks after going through a filtering process and constitute a separate investment area offering investors investment opportunities in line with their personal convictions and strategic orientations; These indices have been the subject of a few studies on their behaviour in the period of crisis, particularly in a developed country context. This article, therefore proposes to analyse the behaviour of ethical indices both socially responsible and Islamic in times of health crisis (COVID19) in a context of emerging countries from two different regions, Africa and Asia by reviewing their context, via their filtering criteria and an in-depth graphical analysis. Our results show that there is a highl correlation between these indices and the absence of a difference in performance in times of crisis.