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This study aims to investigate Malaysian stock market efficiency from the view of Sharīʿah-compliant and conventional stocks based on the effectiveness of technical trading strategies.

This study uses unconventional trading strategies that mix buy recommendations of Bursa Malaysia analysts with sell signals generated from 10 selected technical trading strategies (simple moving average, moving average envelopes, Bollinger Bands, momentum, commodity channel index, relative strength index, stochastic, Williams percentage range, moving average convergence divergence oscillator and shooting star) that are detected using ChartNexus. The period from 1 January 2013 until 31 December 2015 produces a total sample consisting of 1,265 buy recommendations of 125 Sharīʿah-compliant stocks and 400 buy recommendations of conventional stocks. The study period is extended until 31 March 2016 to provide an ample time for detecting the sell signal especially for buy recommendations that are released towards the end of 2015.

The resulting Jensen’s alpha show 8 out of 10 strategies are effective in generating abnormal returns in Sharīʿah-compliant samples while only 3 out of 10 strategies are effective in conventional samples. Prominent effectiveness of technical trading strategies in Sharīʿah-compliant stocks implies clear inefficiency in that stock market segment as opposed to those of the conventional stocks.

The results based on unconventional trading strategies provide new insights of Malaysian stock market efficiency especially in Sharīʿah-compliant and conventional stocks. The paper provides more robust findings on market efficiency as firms’ equity level data were focussed together with analysts’ buy recommendations from Bursa Malaysia.

Drawing upon underinvestment theory and clientele effect hypothesis, this paper aims to examine the effects of foreign currency (forex) exposure and Shari’ah-compliant status on firms’ financial hedging strategy.

Based on data of 250 nonfinancial firms listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2010 to 2018 (2,250 firm-year observations), the authors test the impact of forex exposure based on a vector of foreign-denominated cash flows (FCF) indicators and firms’ Sharīʿah-compliant status on two proxies of financial hedging decisions, namely, the ratio of the notional value of currency derivatives to total assets and a binomial measure of hedging status. The hedging decision models are estimated using panel logistic regression and system generalized method of moments.

The results indicate significant positive effects of the forex exposure indicators on firms’ propensity to hedge. However, the impact of forex exposure is most prevalent via total FCF. The results also reveal significant positive effects of Sharīʿah-compliant status on firms’ propensity to hedge but its negative impacts on the value of currency derivatives they use. The results suggest that Sharīʿah-compliant firms refrain from engaging in currency derivatives to avoid riba’ and subsequently subdue the clientele effect. However, when the forex exposure reaches higher levels, engagement in currency derivatives becomes a matter of tentative necessity (dharurat).

This study relies exclusively on the disclosure of foreign currency risk and management data in the annual reports of listed companies. Consequently, this limits the sample size to only those nonfinancial listed companies with complete data for the study period. Also, since none of the companies reports using Sharīʿah-compliant derivatives, the authors thus assume that they use derivative instruments that tolerate “riba.”

Given the significance of forex exposure on hedging decisions, the accounting profession must strictly adopt FRS 7 and FRS 139 for all listed firms to avoid market scrutiny and sustain their clientele. The results also call for the Islamic market regulators to include mandatory disclosure of conventional currency derivatives in screening firms for clearly prohibited activities to help enhance the credibility of its Islamic financial market.

Due to difficulty accessing relevant cash flow data, the study is among the few studies that measure forex exposure using FCF and test more proxy indicators. This study is perhaps the first to examine the Shari’ah perspective on currency derivatives in corporate forex risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether market conditions have an effect on investors’ propensity to herd in an emerging economy’s stock market. Additionally, given the lack of research on Islamic behavioral finance, the authors further investigate if the herding phenomenon is distinct in Islamic versus conventional stocks.

The authors used daily data for the period of 1995–2016 according to the herding behavior model of Chang et al. (2000), which relies on cross-sectional absolute deviation of returns.

Findings reveal the herding behavior of investors among Shariah-compliant during up and down market exits with non-linear relationship to the market return, while for conventional stocks herding behavior does not exist with linear nor nonlinear relationships during the up and down market. Furthermore, for the whole market, herding behavior only exists during upmarket with a nonlinear relationship to the market return. However, this relationship is not significant. Moreover, the results of this study are robust with respect to the effect of the Asian and global financial crisis.

The findings are useful for investors to identify which market conditions are associated with rational and irrational behavior of investors.

Most of the theoretical and empirical studies on herding behavior have focused on developed countries. Only a few studies have paid attention to the herding behavior in Islamic financial markets, particularly in the context of an emerging market such as Malaysia. This study fills this void.