The impact of general election outcome on institutional owned company stock performance: Evidence from Malaysia

This study examines the effects of the announcement of the general election result on stock returns of 42 companies with government institutional holdings in Malaysia during 2008, 2013 and 2018 general elections. The study employs an event study methodology using the Market model (MM) and Market adjusted return (MAR). The findings indicate that there is a positive relationship between cumulative abnormal return and companies with government institutional holdings during event windows from the fifth day after the announcement of election result to 60 days after the event. This result implies that the market in Malaysia is semi-efficient, where investors react on the publicly available information particularly during the 13th general election. Nonetheless, the result shows that the impact is indifferent no matter which party won the election. The cumulative abnormal return shows significant positive for all three election result announcements even though in 2018, the opposition party, Parti Harapan won for the first time after 60 years Parti Barisan Nasional has ruled Malaysia. Besides, there is also evidence that institutional investors in Malaysia act as passive investors whom trade like retail trader to gain profit instead of monitoring the company to improve their performance.