The Star
KUALA LUMPUR: The selling by offshore funds persisted on Bursa Malaysia to the tune of RM536mil net last week, nearly on a par with the net sales of RM556.9mil in the week prior.
MIDF Research said there was net foreign selling on every day of the week for an unbroken streak of 13 days since March 1.
On Bursa Malaysia, sectors that led the foreign outflow were financial services (RM359.5mil), industrial products and services (RM90.3mil) and consumer products and services (RM63.5mil).
Sectors that saw net foreign inflows were construction (RM67.9mil), technology (RM13.2mil) and transport and logistics (RM7.8mil).
Local institutions shored up buying activity on the market with a net equities purchase of RM565.7mil, the highest weekly amount in 2023 so far.
Local retailers meanwhile were net sellers over the week to the sum of RM29.7il.
Investor sentiment has been weak as the turmoil in the banking sector continued in the US and Switzerland, with seven of the eight Asian stock exchanges tracked by MIDF reporting net selling by foreign investors.
"Based on the provisional aggregate data for the eight exchanges that we track, investors classified as 'foreigners' net sold US$2.48bil worth of Asian equities last week, almost at the same pace as the week prior at -US$2.44bil," said MIDF in a weekly fund flow report.
The sell-off by foreign investors took the FBM KLCI to an intraweek low of 1.391 points last Thursday before rebounding to close at 1,412 on Friday.
Against a backdrop of negative market breadth in three of the five days, the local stock exchange logged daily average trading volume of 3.6 billion shares valued at RM2.7bil, versus the prior week’s average of 2.8 billion shares worth RM1.9bil.
