The impact of the US-China trade war on the Malaysian stock market network

A trade war between China and United States began on March 23, 2018, that affecting the Malaysian economy. Basically, China is Malaysia's most essential and largest trading partner. Meanwhile, the United States is Malaysia's third-largest export market, accounting for 9.5 per cent of total exports, or RM88.7 billion. Any trade liberalisation between these two countries would have a major impact on the economic development of Malaysia. Therefore, the first objective of this research is to investigate the effect of the US-China war trade on the Malaysian market by using network analysis. The second objective is to examine the network's topological properties over the specified period. The data is based on FTSE Emas Index on Bursa Malaysia. The duration is divided into three phases in which before the trade war, after the trade war and overall duration. The threshold network approach is employed to visualize the relationship between the components of the FTSE Emas Index. The results showed that the US-China trade war affect the linkages of the Malaysian stock market in which the stock is more correlated with each other during the trade war.