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This study attempts to explore the extent to which the conditional volatilities of both conventional and Islamic stock markets in Malaysia are related to the conditional volatility of monetary policy variables. Among the monetary policy variables tested in the study are the narrow money supply (M1), the broad money supply (M2), interest rates (TBR), exchange rate (MYR), and Industrial Production Index (IPI), while the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) and Rashid Hussain Berhad Islamic Index (RHBII) are used as measures for conventional and Islamic stock markets, respectively. In order to capture the international influence on both stock markets, the volatility in the U.S. monetary policy variable measured by the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) is incorporated into the study. Unlike our earlier study (Mohd. Yusof and Abd. Majid, 2006) that employed the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH)-M, GARCH (1,1) framework together with Vector Autoregressive (VAR) analysis are employed for the monthly data starting from January 1992 to December 2000 in this study. The study finds that interest rate volatility affects the conventional stock market volatility but not the Islamic stock market volatility. This highlights the tenet of Islamic principles that the interest rate is not a significant variable in explaining stock market volatility. Our finding provides further support that stabilizing interest rate would have insignificant impact on the volatility of the Islamic stock markets.
Yusof et al. (Mon,) studied this question.