Effect of Macroeconomic Variables on Islamic and Conventional Stock Indices - Fresh Evidence from Bangladesh

The macroeconomics and traditional stock market nexus is widely explored in the extant literature, but few studies have focused on the impact of macroeconomics on Islamic stock markets. In fact, to our knowledge, only one or two prior studies have looked into both conventional and Islamic stock markets at the same time to see the impact of macroeconomics for comparison purposes. However, these studies have found differing views. Besides, no study has looked into the issue from the standpoint of Bangladesh. To close the gap, the study primarily explores the effect of macroeconomic variables on Islamic and conventional stock indices. Also, it looks at which index (Islamic or conventional) is more susceptible to macroeconomic shocks. The DSEX Shariah Index and the DSE Broad Index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) are chosen as Islamic and conventional stock indices, respectively. In contrast, inflation rate, money supply, interest rate, and exchange rate are selected as proxies of macroeconomic variables. Using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and Granger causality approaches for the monthly data from January 2014 to June 2021, our findings indicate that aggregate money supply has a positive long-term influence on both Islamic and conventional indices, whereas interest rates have a negative impact. Conversely, in the short run, the interest rate has a favorable impact on both indices. However, inflation only has a short-term impact on the Islamic stock index. Overall, the findings suggest that both indices behave almost analogously with the macroeconomic variables. Therefore, Islamic investors can undoubtedly choose Islamic stocks for their portfolios without sacrificing significant financial losses. Our study also provides some vital policy implications. Since our study finds a strong link between macroeconomics and stock markets, we urge the monetary authority to align their policies with those of the stock markets in Bangladesh because there were previously some inconsistencies in the policies of the monetary authority and stock markets, which appeared to be partly responsible for the recent stock market crash in Bangladesh in 2010-2011.