Open AccessEffects of Holidays on the Malaysian Stock Exchange
Author(s) -
Wong Pik Har,
Lim Wei Chih
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of business and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1833-8119
pISSN - 1833-3850
DOI - 10.5539/ijbm.v11n2p274
Subject(s) - stock exchange , names of the days of the week , ordinary least squares , stock market , stock (firearms) , islam , business , demographic economics , economics , geography , finance , econometrics , linguistics , philosophy , context (archaeology) , archaeology
This research seeks to investigate whether holidays affect the stock exchange of the multi-cultural country of Malaysia. By performing ordinary least squares analysis on data from the Bursa Malaysia main index from year 2001 to year 2010, it was found that returns during Christmas and Chinese New Year period were significantly higher. More specifically, there was a two-month market rally prior to the Chinese New Year. In addition, the excess return from the first trading day after Christmas to two trading days before New Year’s Day are positively significant. The effects of other holidays were not significant. Possible reasons of a lack of significant effects during important Islamic holidays such as Aidilfitri could be due to the Muslim’s lower participation in the stock market.