KUALA LUMPUR: The inflow of foreign portfolio fund into Malaysia has reduced significantly last week as foreign investors only bought RM20mil worth of stocks listed on Bursa.
MIDF Research said in a report on Monday that the top three stocks that had the highest money inflow were CIMB Group Holdings Bhd
(CIMB), YTL Corporation Bhd (YTL), and Tenaga Nasional Bhd (Tenaga).
CIMB recorded the highest net money inflow amounting to RM17.90mil whereas YTL’s accounted to RM14.98mil.
Tenaga posted the third highest net money inflow accounting to RM14.42mil.
However, the top three stocks that had the largest net money outflow were Telekom Malaysia (Telekom), Alliance Financial Group (Alliance) and YTL Power International Bhd (YTL Power).
Telekom recorded the largest, accounting to RM8.41mil whereas Alliance was the second at RM4.08mil.
YTL Power’s outflow accounted to RM2.45mil.
The report said in 2014, foreign investors remained net sellers of Malaysian stocks and the net outflow as of last Friday dropped 30% to RM2.1bil compared to RM3bil last year.
There was volatility seen in terms of buying and selling for foreign investors as they bought back the stocks again after selling it.
On the other hand, Bursa’s average daily foreign participation rate slipped from RM 2.1bil to RM1.1bil last week.
School holiday breaks caused the lowest retail investor’s participation this year, which amounted to RM570mil, it said.
In addition, retailers sold RM95mil offloading for the eighth consecutive week.
Moreover, local institutions participation was also at its lowest in 2014 with the average daily volume at RM1.8bil.
Local funds also bought RM75mil last week.
MIDF added that Malaysia’s improving economic fundamentals coupled with Eurozone loosening its monetary policy would strengthen the ringgit this week.
It noted this would also possibly ensure a continual inflow of foreign portfolio money.
Moving forward, it said trading this week ECB’s Rate cut is likely to keep a healthy sentiment in the global equity market.
