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1. Introduction and motivation
The G7 stock market has always been the center of attraction for researchers during various crises. A growing body of literature on the impact of exogenous shocks on stock markets presents significant results in the G7 stock markets (Akhtaruzzaman et al., 2021b; Berkman and Yang, 2019; Nusair and Olson, 2022; Rehman et al., 2021). The ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict impacts global trade relations due to the resettlement of trade relations triggered by Russian alignments [1 and 2]. The G7 countries have the world's highest GDP contributing 40% of the global GDP. While they have already imposed several economic and financial sanctions, including the freezing of assets of wealthy individuals, expectations of post-war scenarios of a new world order have an effect on global stock markets. While the G7 nations were the first to impose sanctions against Russia, most of them are also among the top export and import partners of Russia. Western sanctions and counters from Russia are expected to drastically change trade scenarios. Consequently, investors are expected to react to changing information (Boubaker et al., 2015; Jin et al., 2022). While the markets are already volatile, firms listed in the G7 nations are expected to react significantly to such war events. While some stock markets have experienced negative impacts, a few are insignificant to the conflict, while others have been positively influenced [3]. It is crucial to know how the stock markets of the top seven contributors to the global GDP react to war events as shocks to these markets are expected to transfer gradually to other markets worldwide.
The impact of conflict and war is not new. Previous studies have documented the adverse and positive impacts of conflict and war. Although there is some empirical evidence for how war events impact stock market returns (Carmignani and Kler, 2018; Hassan et al., 2022; Hudson and Urquhart, 2015; Kimbrough et al., 2020; Leigh et al., 2003; Ruiz Estrada et al., 2020; Schneider and Troeger, 2006), the scant literature does not provide firm-level information of these impacts. Furthermore, owing to the significant global impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, studies on the Russia–Ukraine war are increasing (Boubaker et al., 2022; Boungou and Yatié,...