Effect of covid-19 towards stock market return: evidence of Malaysia healthcare index

COVID-19 is new disease that caused by strain of coronavirus, a type of virus known to cause respiratory infections in humans body. This new disease was unknown December 2019, when an outbreak cause emerged in Wuhan, China. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global stock market return. The number of COVID-19 cases in Malaysia increased which lead to the government of Malaysia announced a movement control order (MCO). The outbreak forced the shutdown the operation of business and daily activities, then affected the stock market. The consequences of infectious are considerable and have been directly affecting stock markets return worldwide. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of COVID-19 outbreak towards Malaysian stock market return. The dependent variable used in this study is healthcare index return. While, the independent variables used in this study are COVID-19 cases, COVID-19 death cases, financial market volatility VIX index and money supply. This study using the secondary data and using daily data which the sample period covered from 24 January 2020 to 23 November 2020. The results also showed that all independent variable tended to affect the healthcare index return. The results of this study shows the effect of COVID-19 on healthcare index return.