Technical Analysis and Malaysian Banking Sector during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The announcements of Movement Control Order and Loan Moratorium caused a significant impact on the stock prices of Malaysian banks during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of technical analysis in predicting the stock price movement and the ability of the technical analysis in generating returns. In doing so, six moving average rules used as the proxy of technical analysis and tested in this study. Majority of the MA rules shown positive returns before the various announcements dates. Specifically, this study revealed that MA rules of (2,5) and (2,10) were among the best performing MA rules during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also recommends the investors to use the signals emitted by the technical indicator as the reference for their investment decision in the banks’ stock.