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This study seeks to: (1) examine the extent of interconnectedness prevailing between the cryptocurrency market, the stock market and the precious metals market. (2) Conduct thorough assessment of hedge and safe-haven qualities of broad range of precious metals and cryptocurrencies against returns on the African stock market.

This study applied two novel approaches that is Cross-quantilogram, an advanced statistical technique used to examine the relationship between quantiles of response variable and the quantiles of predictor variables, and TVP-VAR, a technique that captures the dynamic connectedness of variables under consideration.

It was found that the three markets are highly interconnected, particularly among assets under the respective financial markets. It was further revealed that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was the most resilient stock market, whereas Bitcoin, BNB, Silver (XAG) and Platinum (XPT) also exhibited notable resistance to shocks. Finally, the study found that cryptocurrencies and precious metals portrayed varying hedge and safe haven qualities under the various stock markets.

The high interdependency between the African stock market, cryptocurrencies and precious metals suggests that none of the markets is immune to shocks form the other market. The finding that cryptocurrencies and precious metals exhibit some degree of safe-haven and hedge potentials, albeit limited in certain stock markets, provides investors with alternative investment options during market downturns. Since most African stock markets, except the JSE, are net receivers of shocks, investors in these markets should exercise caution during periods of global financial uncertainty.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the dynamic interconnectedness between seven carefully selected African stock markets, three distinct cryptocurrencies and four precious metals, while also assessing the hedge and safe-haven potential of the cryptocurrencies and precious metals against stock market returns. Additionally, the study stands out in recent literature by employing two novel approaches: the TVP-VAR model, which captures the dynamic connectedness among variables, and the Cross-Quantilogram, an advanced statistical method that analyzes the relationship between the quantiles of the response and predictor variables, all within a single study.

Cryptocurrencies, which have been popular since 2009, raise concerns among investors, researchers and professionals. Amid global economic, financial and health crises, uncertainty has surged, leading investors to seek risk reduction and portfolio diversification. While some critique conventional fiat-based cryptocurrencies, others propose asset-backed alternatives. However, the impact of Shari’ah law-based cryptocurrencies on equity market returns remains largely unexplored in existing literature. This study aims to investigate the lead/lag relationship of selected Islamic and conventional cryptocurrencies from ASEAN and global perspectives.

The authors collected daily data of Bitcoin, Ethereum, X8X (Islamic cryptocurrency), Cardano (Islamic cryptocurrency), S&P500, Volatility Index, Economic Policy uncertainty and FTSE Asean Index (from the 4th of November 2019 to the 1st of July 2022) to reveal empirical results through Continuous Wavelet Transform and Correlation Heatmap with Dendrogram.

The findings indicate that Bitcoin offers a diversification opportunity for FTSE ASEAN investors for the long-term horizon while S&P500 investors will benefit from short-term investment. On the other hand, Ethereum provides better investment opportunities for both indices in the short run compared to long run. Cardano and X8X offer better investment opportunities in the long run for S&P500 and FTSE ASEAN investors. Interestingly, to check the robustness, the authors used correlation Heatmap based on Dendrogram which provided almost similar results.

This study contributes fresh insights to the existing literature concerning cryptocurrency due to the inconclusive findings of past studies, investors are curious to know the impact of cryptocurrency on stock market return from a global perspective which is extensively overlooked, and whether there is any difference between Islamic and conventional cryptocurrency. Therefore, by investigating the abovementioned timely demand issue, this study substantially contributes to the body of cryptocurrency literature.