Covid-19 that emerged in Wuhan, China and spread to Malaysia starting from 25th January 2020 has changed people’s lives and impacted the world’s economy, including the stock markets. The study investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the stock returns in Malaysia by using a sample of thirty (30) constituents of FBM KLCI. The study utilises Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 new cases, death cases, cumulative cases, and cumulative death cases, as well as Singapore new cases and death cases. The impact is observed from 31st December 2019 until 9th June 2020 using the panel regression model. The results show a significant positive but small impact of Covid-19 variables on the stocks’ returns except for Singapore daily cases and death cases, which were negative. The study also identifies that the Malaysian stock market is more sensitive to Covid-19 local death cases during the pandemic.

Malaysia has shown an increasing trend of labour force participation rates across different ages and gender since independence in 1957. This includes a rapid increase in women participation in the labour force across all ages. Female higher participation in labour force has significant impact to economic growth and socio-economic development. World Bank has urged Malaysia to increase women participation in labour force to boost the economic growth. Therefore, it become a national agenda in Twelfth Malaysia Plan (2021-2025) to further increase working female population to 59 percent by 2025. Noting the important of the issue in international and national avenue, this study motivated to investigate the impact of women involvement in the labour market in promoting more equitable income distribution in Malaysia. The study employs the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) approach to study the short-run and long-run effects of female participation in the labour force to reduce the income gap in Malaysia. The model includes other macroeconomic factors such as economic growth rate, GDP per capita, inflation rate and unemployment rate. This study uses annual time series data from 1970 up to 2019. The result shows that female participation in the labour market significantly reduces the income gap in Malaysia both in the short and long run. The study proves that working women have significantly contributed to the Malaysian economy over the long run. Women improvement in education level and steady increment in labour participation level has improved their economic standing which consequently narrowed the national income gap.

Heuristics based low volatility portfolio construction is a straightforward investment strategy that could be implemented by retail investors in the stock market. This study examines the performance of low volatility portfolio for Shariah and conventional stock portfolios. Specifically, this study back tests the profitability of low volatility portfolio using 15 Shariah and conventional stocks that are listed on Bursa Malaysia using data from January 2014 until December 2018. Combination of large, mid, and small capital firms are included in the study to highlight the difference in portfolio concentration within firm size classification. The results show that, the return of conventional portfolio and shariah compliant portfolio is not statistically different. However, the risk in shariah compliant portfolio is statistically higher than the conventional portfolio. Both portfolios give better annualized return and holding period return than their respective benchmark. Thus, retail investor could take advantage of the strategy to generate abnormal return. For investors that focus on shariah compliant investment only, even though the portfolio has slightly higher risk than the conventional counterpart, this strategy is still worth considering. However, it is advisable for investor to monitor portfolio risk regularly to avoid excessive risk taking and to include more shariah compliant large cap stocks in the portfolio. Keywords: Low Volatility Portfolio, Shariah Compliant Stock, Retail Investor.

Malaysia’s economic growth has been rising steadily over the years and one of the main contributors is the insurance sector. The literature has recorded mixed findings on the relationship between insurance and economic growth. This paper examines the relationship between the insurance sector and economic growth in Malaysia over an extended period of 1990-2021. This paper uses three proxies for the insurance sector i.e. life insurance premiums, nonlife insurance premiums, and total insurance premiums. The Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM) approaches are employed to achieve the objective. While controlling for foreign direct investment, export, and import, this paper found that there is a positive long-run relationship between non-life insurance premiums and economic growth. Conversely, a negative short-run relationship is observed between life insurance premiums and economic growth. The total insurance premium has a negative short-run relationship with economic growth yet is insignificant for the long-run. The non-life insurance sector has a larger contribution compared to life insurance on Malaysia's economic growth as the market depends more on capital formation and investments, particularly in infrastructure, real estate, and capital markets. The insurance sector provides financial expansion in terms of payment for protection which results in an economic boost.