Trends and Calendar effects in Malaysia’s Stock Market

Abstract

Investing can help a person's wealth to generate more, and investing in stock is proven as one of the most profitable forms of available investment. The benefits gained in stock broking are immediate Buy/Sell which investor can sell part of their investment any time and at low transaction cost. However, investing in stock will require investor to observe the market, as market can be a volatile place and investor need to acquire knowledge of what they actually are doing. This study will discuss the price trends over the year, and how it will get affected by the seasonality in Malaysia, which also known as the calendar effects. The factor to be investigated in this study is the price on holiday’s season, the January effect or any other monthly seasonality. The daily price of KPJ Healthcare Berhad for the year 2011 is the sample was chosen in this study. Further this study, data used is derived from the weak-form efficient markets hypothesis, which is the price history and case study. Regression method is used in this study in order to help achieving the findings. This should be a continuous study, and adding on more other factors, such as wars and economic crises, and traders, investors and other speculators. This paper has proved the existence of calendar anomalies in KPJ's stock price for Chinese New Effect, Aidilfitri Effect and Christmas Effect. However, the price changes are believed more likely due to the investors tormenting about central banks raising interest rates to restrain rising inflation. Other than that, for Aidilfitri Effect and Christmas Effect, further study should be perform since the raise of the stock market, may be due to the world’s stock market begin to be stronger after the European sovereign debt crisis to Spain and Italy in August. 

Conversely, there are positive returns for January. However, the findings are non-related to the January effect. This is because January effect arises due to tax-loss selling, which Malaysia has a different tax system compared to other countries. Shareholders in Malaysia are not necessary to pay any taxes on the return they gained from share trading.