A Comparative Analysis of Food-Related Securities During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally transformed the way in which people have gone about their lives the past two years. One aspect of that change that has been of particular interest to me is how consumer preferences for methods of food consumption have shifted over the course of the pandemic. Using stock returns data and Covid-19 related statistics from the CDC, I analyze the stock performance of three food-related companies which stand to benefit from these changes in consumer preferences. My analysis centers on the use and further development of models from the field of finance. I find no statistically significant indication that the stocks of these three companies outperformed relative benchmarks, despite their theoretically favorable operating conditions in the past two years. The implications of these findings are discussed in the conclusion section.