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Malaysian Stock Market Performance through Time

Below is a time chart of Malaysia's stock market index, the KLCI. The annotation shows that the lowest point was on September 1st 1998, in the depth of the Asian Financial Crisis. In a later post I will add other indexes in the region to compare relative performance of Malaysia in light of increasing global uncertainty driven by a weak China, strong dollar, and the commodity price slump. But the purpose of this is to challenge calls for extraordinary policy action by the central bank (BNM) such as to reinstate capital controls to limit draw-downs by foreign investors in the Malaysian stock market to slow the ringgit's depreciation.

Data source: Yahoo Finance. Note: The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index comprises of the largest 30 companies by full market capitalization on Bursa Malaysia's Main Board. When launched, on July 6, 2009 it replaced the Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index starting at the closing value of the KLCI Index on July 3 2009, also inheriting the full history of the KLCI Index. Below I compare China's Shanghai Composite index to the KLCI by indexing each market to 100 on January 3rd, 1995. Each point thereafter is therefore comparing each market's performance relative to early 1995.

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