Is the dispersion of sectoral situations caused by the COVID crisis visible in sectoral stock market indices or are they correlated by the abundance of liquidity?
The COVID crisis has given rise to great heterogeneity in the situations of different business sectors. Some are negatively affected, probably for the long term (automotive, air transport, aeronautics, hotels-restaurants-tourism, traditional retail, construction); others are still growing or even benefiting from the crisis (new technologies, telecom, online retail, healthcare-pharmaceuticals, agri-food). We would therefore expect the situations of the different business sectors to become more dispersed after the COVID crisis. We seek to determine whether this increased dispersion is reflected in sectoral stock market indices, or whether, on the contrary, the abundance of liquidity is driving all sectoral stock market indices upwards at the same time, regardless of the state of the sector. In the euro zone, we see no (as a level) or a fairly small (year-on-year) increase in the dispersion of sectoral stock market indices, which shows the "homogenising" role of liquidity.