Asymmetric correlations and hedging effectiveness of cryptocurrencies for the European stock market

The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to examine the hedging effectiveness of cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency portfolios for European equities in bearish and bullish market conditions, and second, to contrast cryptocurrencies with gold as a safe haven asset. To this end, daily data from 2018 to 2021 were employed in a linear and nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework. The findings have significant implications for investors, financial intermediaries and regulators. First, none of the cryptocurrencies under investigation acts as a safe haven for the European stock market. Second, an asymmetric relationship was found between Bitcoin / Ethereum returns on the one hand and stock market returns on the other, indicating the risk of large joint losses during periods of market turmoil. Third, cryptocurrency portfolios appear to perform better than Bitcoin and Ethereum for diversification purposes. Fourth, among cryptocurrency portfolios, the portfolio made up of the top ten cryptocurrencies appear to be the best in terms of diversification benefits and the risk-return profile. Finally, during the 2020 bear market conditions, not even gold acted as a safe haven for European stocks, highlighting the need to investigate alternative safe haven assets to mitigate portfolio risks