By focusing on Malaysian data, this study investigates the response of the Islamic stock market to changes in major macroeconomic variables such as industrial output, money supply, unemployment rate, exchange rate and foreign interest rate. It focuses on the period from January 2010 to December 2014 to capture the period of a prolonged downturn in the global financial market due to the U.S. financial crisis which started in 2007. The study adopts the cointegration approach of the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model in order to capture the long-run relationship between the variables. The results show that the Islamic stock price reacts positively to the domestic factors, namely industrial activities, money supply, unemployment rate and real effective exchange rate disturbances. Interestingly, it reacts negatively to the foreign interest rate, suggesting investors' "flight to quality" behaviour during a downturn in the global equity market.

Statistics and a survey of the literature revealed the existence of a massive problem in the financial prudence of Malaysians, including Muslims. One glaringly prominent aspect is the absence of a spiritual/religious interventionist approach in exploring the lack of consumer awareness that led to the present situation. Instead of attempting to solve the problem through brute economic policies, a wasatiyyah-oriented approach is warranted for informing consumers of their religious obligation to avoid profligate spending and adopt moderation in financial matters. Hence, the objective of this study is to examine the practice of moderation (the concept of wasatiyyah) among Muslims consumers in their financial decision-making. Primary data were collected through a self-administrated survey on a selected group of Muslim consumers. A relevant statistical software was employed to perform exploratory-factor analysis (EFA) through principal-component analysis (PCA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modelling (SEM) on the collected data. The findings demonstrated that moderation (wasatiyyah) partially mediates the relationship between materialism and financial decisions. Consequently, Muslim consumers who practice moderation while making their financial decisions are more conscious of their credit management and thus spend according to their means.

This paper reports new findings on the price effect from trading halts - both voluntary and mandatory - over 2000-04 in an emerging share market, Malaysia. Based on our overall sample, trading halts lead to positive price reaction, increased volume, and increased volatility. We found evidence of information leakage resulting in a significant difference between voluntary and mandatory halts as well as the type of news released during halts to warrant such an impact. The duration of the halt has an isolated impact and is largely inconsequential. The frequency of halts does not seem to matter.

Housing affordability is important to ensure houses are affordable to everyone across all income categories, whether they are in the low-income, middle-income (M40), or high-income group. Building housing projects on waqf land will help increase the supply of affordable houses, especially targeted at the M40 group, while also addressing the shortage of affordable housing for the M40 cohort. This study analyses public perceptions of house characteristics and relate these factors to affordable housing prices. The independent variables are location, infrastructure, facilities, size, design and quality. By applying a quantitative research design, the study aims to understand the relationship between various demanded housing characteristics vis-a-vis the price of the house. A sample of 261 usable responses was analysed using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The results show that house size is not statistically significant in influencing the housing price, while location, infrastructure and design of the house are positively significant factors. These findings are expected to provide important inputs to the relevant authorities on factors that are critical in influencing the prices of housing projects built on waqf land in Malaysia.

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