Foreign funds back in selling mode on Bursa last week

KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign funds turned net sellers last week with net outflow of RM288.13mil against a net buying of RM326.06mil in the preceding week.

“As the market reopened on Monday last week, foreign investors sold RM57.15mil net of local equities, with retailers and local institutions as net buyers to the tune of RM15.97mil and RM41.18mil respectively,” MIDF Research said in its weekly fund flow report.

The research house noted that foreign investors were net seller every day during last week. The largest foreign outflow was recorded on Thursday at RM117.11mil at the smallest outflow was on Wednesday at only RM8.87mil.

On the other hand, retailers were net buyers every day for last week. Largest net buying was recorded on Thursday at RM172.95mil and smallest net purchase was on Friday at RM71.17mil.

Similar to foreign investors behaviour, MIDF said local institutions saw negative flow last week.

“Buyings were recorded on Monday and Friday with small net inflows of below RM50.00mil each.

“Net selling activities were bigger, resulting in net selling to the tune of RM138.03mil. The biggest net outflow was on Tuesday with net selling of RM72.59mil,” MIDF said.

Since the beginning of 2021, cumulatively, retailers are the only net buyers of our equity market to the tune of RM1.16bil.

“Local institutions and foreign investors are net sellers to the tune of RM862.97mil and RM299.09mil respectively,” it said.

“In comparison to another three South East Asian markets that we tracked last week; Thailand and Indonesia recorded foreign net inflows whereas the Philippines and Malaysia experienced net outflows,” it added.

In terms of participation, the retail investors recorded a weekly decrease of -9.49% in average daily trade value (ADTV) while the foreign investors and local institutions experienced declines in ADTV of -23.16% and -7.66% respectively.