Secondary markets are vital for the development of Islamic capital markets (ICMs) (Aziz, 2007). They facilitate the reselling of securities among investors, thus adding liquidity to these instruments (Mishkin, 2004: 26-27). Besides this basic role, secondary markets assist in reducing average cost of capital; bringing about a rational representation of the pricing of securities in primary as well as secondary markets; facilitating the exchange of investment risks; evaluating the performance of private and public sector, and mitigating information asymmetry (Ahmed, 1995; Al-Eshkar, 1995; El-Gari, 1993; Mishkin, 2004). However, secondary market trading of Islamic securities involves various issues. One of the greatest concerns is the lack of standardization, or at least harmonization, of ICM products. There are also conflicting resolutions, standards and individual fatwas (Islamic legal opinions) on the tradability of Islamic securities within the industry. It is feared that this creates confusion in the industry and may hinder the overall development of the ICM (Cox, 2005; Shaharuddin et al., 2012). Given the importance and concerns regarding the ICM, this study aims at investigating the vital issue of tradability of Islamic securities from the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) perspective.

The Maldives has embarked on the huge task of developing Islamic finance parallel to its existing conventional finance market. After establishing its very first Islamic bank in March 2011, the country also witnessed the issuance of its first Islamic equity in 2011. The first company in Maldives that was listed as a company issuing Shariah compliant equity was Amana Takaful Maldives. The country is subsequently moving towards the development of a sukuk market.

One of the basics of the regularity of the Islamic financial industry is that it is subject to many legal and regulatory protections that directly or indirectly affected the progress of its financing and investment activities. The Islamic capital market sector, especially sukuk, is one of the most affected products. However, the tradability of sukuk at the international and local levels may be hindered by differences in the legal system and jurisprudential schools of thought, which may lead to a lack of certainty and a defect in the applicable laws. There is no doubt that investing in sukuk requires providing reassurance and confidence from investors on the abundance of the necessary protection from the law, the supervisory apparatus, the unity of the regulatory framework and its adequacy with the nature of sukuk. In this context, this research comes to study the legal and supervisory system applied to sukuk in Malaysia and how to it help sactualize sukuk-holders� protection. A descriptive and analytical approach were employed to study the status of this system and the relevant data and sources, along with its analysis, to derive the elements of protection for sukuk holders.The research finds that the most important objectives of the legal and regulatory system lie in gaining the confidence of investors, providing reassurance, transparency, and consolidating justice, the difference in laws and the instability of regulatory systems are stumbling blocks to all that. It is noteworthy that the development of the Islamic finance industry is in urgent need to either have its own regulatory framework or to improve the existing ones to address challenges or reduce them. It should be given competitive opportunities with the conventional financial industry on an equal footing.

An efficient market has been theoretically proven to be a key component for effective and efficient resource allocation in an economy. This paper incorporates econophysics with Efficient Market Hypothesis to undertake a comparative analysis of Islamic and developed countries’ markets by extending the understanding of their multifractal nature. By applying the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) we calculated the generalized Hurst exponents, multifractal scaling exponents and generalized multifractal dimensions for 22 broad market indices. The findings provide a deeper understanding of the markets in Islamic countries, where they have traces of highly efficient performance particularly in crisis periods. A key finding is the empirical evidence of the impact of the ‘stage of market development’ on the efficiency of the market. If Islamic countries aim to improve the efficiency of resource allocation, an important area to address is to focus, among others, on enhancing the stage of market development

Islamic financial instruments differ from conventional instruments because of their risk sharing and justice factor. Talking specifically about fund raising instruments, Sukuks are the most vital and demanded instrument. Despite of its risk sharing and equity feature, Sukuk defaults yet happened which eventually raised several questions on the viability of these instruments and their treatment in a distressed situation that provides us with another avenue of research on these instruments. In this paper, we analysed five major Sukuk defaults that happened recently in the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis ...

The derivatives markets in the Asian region have shown significant growth and development since their inception. Similarly, derivatives market in Malaysia and Bursa Malaysia Derivatives have experienced remarkable changes and developments. This study focuses mainly on the stock index futures contract (FKLI) and its relationship with the underlying spot index (FBM KLCI). The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers' asset allocation strategy. The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers’ asset allocation strategy. Mainly based on intraday data, this study makes an analysis of issues on pricing efficiency, the expiration-day effects on volume and volatility, the lead lag relationship between stock index and stock index futures, in Malaysian derivatives market as a newly advanced emerging market. Based on the underlying assumption that if a mispricing were to arise, unlimited arbitrage trading would trigger the market price back to its theoretical fair value and hedging effectiveness may go down as a result of pricing inefficiency, the first essay investigates the study of pricing efficiency specifically on the extent of mispricing by contract, evolution of mispricing, and mispricing episodes. Daily data based on the cost-of-carry model and 15-minute intraday data based on the basis model are used to address the issue of pricing efficiency. This essay fills the gap by introducing 15-minute intraday data, in addition to a larger time span of daily data. The results show variations in mispricing over time under study and provide valuable information for policymakers and fund managers as the Malaysia markets become more efficient and seem to provide a better avenue to hedge their positions and protect their investment values.

With the development of Islamic banking and finance in most Muslim countries, money market became necessary for financial institution to solve the liquidity problems. However, there is much criticism of Islamic banks and financial products for their pegging to the interest rate. Islamic money market is based on the same PLS principle with other Islamic financial products, if such products are pegged to their rate of interest, then they are not PLS. More correctly, they are based on well-and sometimes not so well-hidden conventional or interest-based contracts ...

This study attempts to investigate the issue of integration of Islamic equity markets (i) not only whether these markets are moving together or not (ii) but also whether the permanent and temporary components of these markets are moving together or not. Our evidence tends to indicate that these selected Islamic markets are bound together by one cointegrating relationship with the Euro zone Islamic equity market being the most leading one and the U.K. Islamic equity market being the follower. Beveridge-Nelson (BN) time series decomposition analysis reinforces the integration by indicating that both the permanent and transitory components of all these Islamic equity indices tend to move almost together leading to further integration of the Islamic equity markets. Finally, the study tends to suggest that the financial crises did affect the investments in Islamic Equity markets. The findings of this study are also consistent with the Shariah views of economic and financial integration and have strong policy implications.

This paper is the first attempt to investigate the multiscale tendency of the co-movement and cross-correlation of nine Islamic Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) returns across the global developed and emerging markets using both wavelet coherence and wavelet MODWT methods. The wavelet coherence results tend to indicate consistent co movement between most of the ETF returns especially in the long run. The study also uncovers evidence of wide variation of co-movement across the time-scales during the global financial crisis and the Euro debt crisis. Strong co-movement can be observed during the global financialcrisis, both for the medium term investors and long term investors. The paper studies the relationship between different ETF returns using wavelet multi-resolution analysis. The cross-correlation analysis also shows certain significant and positive correlations between the ETF returns, especially during the period of global financial crisis. The findings from these two recent dynamic time-scale decomposition methodologies have important policy implications for both risk management and investors’ investment policy.

The slides highlight: 1) funding growth without debt; 2) risk sharing contracts of Islamic finance; 3) issue and challenges.

The Capital Market Development Authority (CMDA) is the regulator for the capital markets in the Maldives. In May 2011, the CMDA took the initiative to develop a fully-fledged Islamic capital market in the Maldives and the first step towards this vision was to establish a Capital Market Shariah Advisory Committ ee (CMSAC).

In the literature of corporate finance, there exists alongside others, an age long inquiry into the behaviour and determinants of corporate capital structure. The study into capital structure behaviour was pioneered by Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963) and which is still widely research today. Despite years of research, much are still unknown to us, which determinants are reliable explanator of capital structure variations across firms and time. In 1984, Stewart C. Myers officially introduced the "Capital Structure Puzzle" in his American Finance Association Presidential Speech. The capital structure puzzle at its heart asks the question of how do firms decide and manage their capital structure?

In the Islamic finance capital market spectrum, the potential of mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk is hampered with criticism by Shariah scholars. Among the criticisms include the presence of uncertainties surrounding sukuk returns, the risk of losses that the rabbul-mal (investors) have to bear, and the need to mitigate agency costs (for mudharabah contracts). This have made it a deterrent for both issuers and investors in seeing the instrument as a viable alternative to debt-based sukuk structures. This study proposes an improvement to musyarakah sukuk. It begins with a qualitative examination of the structure of corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issued in Malaysia. The examination finds risk-sharing sukuk structures in Malaysia contain features that supresses the risk sharing element between the sukuk investors and issuer. Findings from qualitative analysis is supported by generalized method of moments (GMM) and threshold analysis. Based on the sample of 86 corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issuances, the introduction of partnership sukuk in the firm's capital structure is found to be insignificant in affecting both firm risk and firm performance. The present partnership sukuk structure is then modified to incorporate variable returns (coupon payments) proportionate to the firm's net profits and variable principal repayment proportionate to the firm's total assets value. This study finds that when sukuk returns are made variable, sukuk investors are able to earn better/ equitable returns compared what they are earning in the current sukuk structure.

This paper investigates the dynamic causal linkages in the daily returns among four conventional and three Shariah compliant indices (such as, Financial Times Stock Exchange Shariah China Index, Asia Shariah Index, Malaysia EMAS Shariah Index, China Shanghai Stock Exchange [SSE] Composite Index, Hang Seng Index, Nikkei 225 and KOSPI) in Asia region through the application of the standard time series techniques. Essentially, the purpose of this research is to identify the extent of influence of conventional and Islamic, regional and international equity markets on Shariah-compliant equity investment in China. Our study is focused on investigating the following empirical questions: (i) Which indices do the Shariah China Index commove with? (ii) Which indices is the Shariah China Index Granger-causally related with? and (iii) Which major stock index was driving the selective conventional and Shariah-compliant stock indices? Our findings tend to suggest: (i) The Shariah China Index appears to have a theoretical and long-run comovement with all the select conventional and Shariah-compliant stock indices (as evidenced in the Cointegration and LRSM tests) (ii) The Shariah China Index is Granger-caused by all the conventional and Shariah-compliant stock indices (as evidenced in the vector error correction modelling tests) (iii) Finally, what stands out is the leadership of the China conventional SSE market followed by the Malaysia Shariah market in driving all indices including the Shariah China Index (as evidenced in the VDCs tests).

This study constructs active Islamic portfolios using a multi-style rotation strategy, derived from the three prominent styles, namely, momentum, value, and quality investing. We use the stocks that are consistently listed in the U.S. Dow Jones Islamic index for a sample period from 1996 to 2012. We also include two macroeconomic mimicking portfolios to capture the premiums of industrial production growth and inflation innovation, accommodating the economic regime shifts. Based on the information coefficients, we find the six-month momentum and the fractal measure as momentum factors; the enterprise yield (gross profit/TEV) and the book to market ratio as valuation factors; the gross profit to total assets, the return on capital, and the scaled total accruals as quality factors. We further construct active portfolios using the augmented Black Litterman (ABL) factor model to avoid the factor alignment problem, with the factor views predicted using Markov Switching VAR, MIDAS, and Bayesian Model Averaging. The out-of-sample performance of our portfolios can produce information ratios of 0.7–0.8 over the composite indices, and information ratios of 0.42–0.48 over the style indices, with the annualized alphas of 10–11%. Even when we put the constrained tracking error of 1% over the benchmark, our portfolios still produce information ratios of 0.9–1.2 before transaction costs, and 0.6–0.8 after transaction costs. We provide intuitive explanations for each premium changing over time, and suggest the promising strategy for Islamic equity investors to outperform the market.

On average the Islamic finance industry has grown by almost 20% per annum, a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2009 to 2013 (IFSB, 2013) with its current assets estimated to be worth USD 2 trillion and is set to reach USD 5 trillion in year 2020. This paper aims to analyse three Shari'ah screening methodologies namely Securities Commission (Malaysia), FTSE NASDAQ Dubai Shari'ah Index Series and the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indices. A sample of 30 companies comprising Shari'ah and non-Shari'ah stocks invested by the Malaysian institutional funds were analysed. Our analysis shows that out of the 30 samples stocks, only eight companies passed the screening using the criteria of the three providers. The limitations of the study is the non-availability of detailed information such as type of bank accounts and debts, hence assumption made is that the cash are placed in conventional accounts unless indicated.

The slides highlight: 1) an overview of the Islamic capital market (ICM); 2) how does the ICM connect people; 3) advantages of ICM regulatory development.

The recent surge in demand for Shariah compliant instruments alongside the launch of Dow Jones City group Sukuk Index in 2006 has further catalyzed the increase in the number of issuance of global Islamic Sukuk. Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar have become major issuers of global Sukuk which are highly demanded by investors. The normal rationale given behind such behavior might be the religious commitments to involve in riba free investments. However, it is worth testing that is it only religious commitments that are driving the demand or there may be some other factors contributing to this surge. Realizing that the majority of global Sukuk issuance is from the oil exporter countries, one such factor could be the price of crude oil. The relationship between crude oil prices and global Sukuk Index is not much covered in the literature as the facility has just started gaining attention in global capital markets. Insufficient data and the lack of reliable benchmarks for global Islamic Sukuk performances add further to the difficulties. While being impaired by such limits, this study will attempt to find out the possibility of any impact of oil prices on the global Sukuk returns and hence their issuance. The aims are achieved using advanced wavelet techniques. Our results, based on discrete wavelet, showed that there turned out to be noticeable correlation between the heave in global Sukuk issuance and the crude oil prices on more times than not.

Islamic stock screening bodies are vital due to the increase in the numbers of mixed companies in the world. This creates a dilemma as there is no uniform Islamic stock screening procedure followed by the screening bodies. This has created confusion among the investors to some extent. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the criteria used in the screening process and also to examine the different methods and approach used by the different providers of stock screening solutions. The questions addressed in this paper are; whether the different procedures and yardsticks used to screen stocks are acceptable; whether the procedures inhibit the growth of Islamic equities in the global market; and whether there is a need for uniform stock screening procedures worldwide.

On the backdrop of growing importance of Shariah compliant equity markets, the purpose of this paper is to study cross-country portfolio diversification benefits for investors with major trading partners of Saudi Arabia, namely, USA, China, Japan, Germany and India, who have already invested or tend to invest in Saudi Arabian stock market. The authors have investigated time invariant, dynamic correlations at different investments horizons of the investors among Islamic asset classes by applying relevant econometric techniques like multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic - DCC and continuous wavelet transforms. For robustness, this study also applied maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform. The findings tend to indicate that the Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with all major trading partners in the short-term investment horizon. Interestingly, Saudi Arabian market has the least portfolio diversification benefits with the Chinese market. However, in the long run, all markets are correlated, yielding minimum portfolio diversification benefits and most importantly Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with the Indian Islamic equity market in almost all investment horizons. The findings are highly consistent across different econometric technique estimations.

The study of currency exposure in the context of small open economies such as the ASEAN-4 region is important in view of the higher degree of openness of the economies and the progressive growth of the Islamic finance industry. This study examined the presence of currency exposure in a sample of 405 listed non-financial corporations from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand over a duration of 18 years from 1993 to 2010. This study is different from previous studies as it combines two assessment methods, i.e., the cash flow (CF) and stock returns (SR) approaches. Furthermore, this study covers two major events of the financial crises ...