What Graphs do International Investors See in the ASEAN Capital Markets?

To remain successful in a world of proliferating business graphs, international investors and other users must be aware of possible graphical misrepresentations. Naïve investors can be easily misled by distorted business graphs and make investments on the basis of their ostensibly computer-generated data. This study examines the relationship between graph distortion measures and firms' financial performance. We manually collected publicly available data from 2015 for 370 companies, across three industry sectors, trading on the stock exchanges of six ASEAN countries-Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. After several rounds of filtering, 3,897 usable graphs were measured for distortion using the relative graph discrepancy index (RGD). The results show that the graphs produced by fast-growing, developing markets, such as the Philippines and Thailand, have high average distortion scores, whereas those produced by mature markets, such as Singapore, have low graph distortion scores. However, the relationship between graph distortion scores and firm performance is inconclusive. Findings from the archival data were triangulated with perceptual data collected through an online survey of 38 MBA students. The archival data appear to indicate a negative relationship, whereas the perceptual data suggest a positive one.