Impact of COVID-19 on islamic unit trust fund and conventional unit trust fund performance: a comparative analysis in Malaysia / Muhammad Ammar Zahin Musa

During the Covid-19 epidemic, this study compares the performance of Islamic and conventional unit trust funds. The data used in this study was collected on a monthly basis from January 2018 to December 2021. For the study, a total of 40 unit trust funds were chosen, with I l Islamic unit trust funds and 29 conventional unit trust funds. Standard methods for measuring mutual fund performance, such as the Sharpe index and adjusted Sharpe index, Jensen Alpha, timing, and selectivity ability, were employed to meet the key objectives of this paper. The purpose of this study is to compare the quantitative performance of funds managed using two data collection method. The findings of this research suggest a mixed result of performance, where some funds outperformed the market benchmark while others underperformed it. Furthermore, Jensen's alpha statistics show that just a few unit trust funds have a positive alpha, indicating that some of the fund managers are adept at market timing or selecting unit trust funds. During this pivotal time, this research can assist investors and fund managers in making decisions on how to improve the performance of their portfolios. This research will also give a broad overview of Malaysian unit trust funds' behaviour and performance over the course of the COVID-19 issue. As the end of the results, Islamic funds have a lower average return than the market portfolio during the full study period, whereas conventional funds have a higher average return than the market portfolio over the same time period. This conclude that Conventional funds has good performance than Islamic funds during Covid-19.
Keywords: Comparative analysis, Islamic Unit Trust Funds, Conventional Unit Trust Funds, unit trust performance.