STOCK MARKET RESPONSES TO COVID-19 CASES: UNLOCKING MA-LAYSIA’S FUTURE

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a major health and economic crisis on a global scale. The waves of this crisis hit Malaysia since early March 2020. This unpredicted crisi in 2020. However, the country is still in the line of planning and introduced its mission and vision of shared prosperity in 2030. In contrast, during this crisis, the impact has especially been hard on vulnerable groups. The stock market of Malaysia was also affected. The government introduced a stimulus package to attempt to recover the economy. This study focuses on KLCI Index on the impact of COVID-19 cases reported on day trading and macroeconomic variables during the year 2020. We employ the Bound Test to identify the co-integration and perform the ARDL. The results show that the cases reported have a significant impact on macroeconomic variables and the stock market in both the short- and long run. In conclusion, we found that the effective management of a health crisis is one of the best solutions to reduce the negative impact on economic performance and recover from any crisis.