Introduction

The spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has significantly impacted the global financial markets over a relatively short period. The COVID pandemic's strong spillover effect on stock markets gained the attention of policymakers and academicians worldwide. The extant research has examined the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock markets response in different contexts and yield mixed evidence. This research aims to synthesize the findings of the studies that have explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock markets to identify the research progress and the research trends in this contemporary literature through a bibliometric and systematic review.

Methods

We have searched contemporary literature on spillover effects of COVID-19 on stock markets from Scopus databases. We have finalized 69 studies. We conducted the bibliomatric analysis through bibliomatrix R package and systematic review by following PRISMA guidelines.

Findings

The most common keywords are COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, stock market, event study, stock market volatility, lockdowns, google trends. The finance research letter is the key journal in which 17 out of 69 papers have been published. Chinese researchers make the highest contributions with 17 publications out of 69. We have identified five research trends: 1) fear of COVID-19 enhanced stock market volatility and reduced efficiency; 2) COVID-19 events analysis; 3) Investors sentiments analysis based on google trends during COVID-19; 4) sector-wise impact of COVID-19 in stock markets; 5) consequences of government response strategies on stock markets.

Conclusion and implications

Our study highlights the research progress on the spillover effects of COVID-19 on stock markets. Few studies have focused on negative news biasness in the stock market during the crisis period precisely. Thus, we suggest upcoming studies contribute to this issue empirically. We have observed a lack of research on the post-pandemic effects of COVID-19 on stock markets. Therefore, we suggest that upcoming studies explore the post-pandemic strategies' effects on stock markets. Our research also suggests that policymakers and researchers design preventive strategies for stock markets to avoid the detrimental effects of future infectious diseases and pandemics. Finally, we recommend that regulators must focus on small equity investors and small firms with high debt and working capital requirements in stimulus packages during the crisis period and provide awareness against panic selling and herding