The Impact of Global Financial Shocks to Islamic Indices : Speculative Influence or Fundamental Changes ?

Abstract

The ripples of the financial crisis are still being felt over different parts of the world causing much distress to the real economy. The capital market, in particular, took a massive hit during the crisis plummeting to all-time lows. In the footsteps of globalization, a financial shock to the US capital market can cause a spill over effect to other markets, Islamic capital market included. Hence, this paper attempts to address the question whether Islamic indices are affected through fundamental changes or short-term influences by sudden changes in volatility as compared to their conventional counterparts. To empirically analyze this, we apply continuous wavelet technique to identify comovements between world financial indices and Islamic indices for World, Asia Pacific and Emerging Markets specifically. Covering a time period of 15 years (1997 – 2011), our results confer that Islamic indices in the Asia Pacific and Emerging Market region are partially immune to speculative shocks to global financial services making them a good alternative. Similarly, Islamic indices testified more stable due to their rigid screening criteria. © 2013 The IIUM Institute of Islamic Banking and Finance.