Performance of islamic equity and fixed-income funds during the covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia

Abstract

This article discussed the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the performance of Equity and Fixed-Income Islamic unit trusts in Malaysia. The study adopted two methods of analysis; (i) empirical analysis using conventional methodologies such as Sharpe, Treynor and Jensen in comparing the 2019 and 2020 performance of Malaysian Islamic fixed-income and Islamic equity unit trust funds, whilst run (ii) in-depth performance review on Islamic unit trusts using systematic literature review. The findings show that both the Islamic unit trust funds and fixed-income equity demonstrated fairly good performance, indicating an outperformed indicator as compared to the established benchmark during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, given significant positive insight to the investors would profiting from Islamic mutual or unit trust funds, by offering decent hedging for long-run investment. Second, risk-averting investors may benefit from investing in the diversified portfolios of Islamic equity funds as they have been proven to perform marginally better than conventional funds owing to better risk management.

Keywords:

• unit trust
• performance
• covid-19
• systematic literature review
• Malaysia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research and publication. This study was fully supported by Universiti Malaysia Sabah research grant (SBK0458-2021)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Pusat Penyelidikan dan Inovasi, Universiti Malaysia Sabah [SBK0458-2021].