Stock analysis: Business & Marketing Essay

STOCK ANALYSIS
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PART ONE
Portfolio management is considered the selection, prioritization, and control of an organization's projects and programs, in line with its capacity to deliver strategic objectives. The primary goal is to balance the change initiatives' implementation and maintain business-as-usual while also optimizing investment return. On the other hand, a portfolio manager is a professional responsible for making investment decisions and conducting investment activities on behalf of organizations or vested individuals. However, governments' restrictions for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic impact on public health and the economy had adverse effects on the stock markets, including the portfolio.
Impact on the Stock Market
The study conducted by Ashraf (2020) confirms the adverse effects of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases on stock returns within global markets. The study postulates that various government actions significantly contributed to these impacts. Such actions include social distancing measures, income support packages, in addition to containment and health response. The social distancing measures include the closure of workplaces, public transport, schools, parks, and other public places. The income support packages comprise the government's financial assistance to households in the form of debt relief or direct cash transfers, in addition to other payments for utilities (Tisdell, 2020, p. 18). Containment and health response is primarily concerned with the government campaigns of public awareness and the quarantining and testing policy.
Therefore, these government actions are postulated to, directly and indirectly, impact the stock market returns, particularly on the portfolio. For instance, for the direct impacts, the social distancing measures might have directly adversely impacted the stock market returns and the portfolio by negatively impacting economic activity (Zaremba, Aharon, Demir, Kizys & Zawadka, 2020, p. 101359). On the other hand, government health response and containment and income support packages are likely to lead to a positive market reaction, particularly improving investors' confidence and reducing the negative economic impacts to the portfolio as a result of the disease.
Additionally, such government actions' indirect effect is particularly manifested through the decrease in the intensity outbreaks of COVID-19. Strict and comprehensive government actions, including aggressive testing, generous income support programs by governments, strict social distancing measures, and quarantining policy, might significantly reduce the rate of new infections. Recent literature, including Ashraf (2020), reports that globally, various stock markets have responded to this COVID-19 pandemic outbreak with strong negative returns. Therefore, it is argued that if stringent government actions can be capable of reducing the intensity of COVID-19 local outbreaks, then they are likely weakening the adverse market reaction to the growth of the confirmed cases of this disease.
For instance, the Vietnam stock market performed in opposing ways both before and during the countrywide lockdown. Tisdell (2020) pos...