Foreign selling extended to fifth week, with RM147.87m offloaded last week — MIDF Research
KUALA LUMPUR (July 26): Foreign investors remained net sellers for the fifth consecutive week last week, with outflow amounting to RM147.87 million, MIDF Research says.
“Since the beginning of 2021, cumulatively, retailers have been the only net buyers of our equity market to the tune of RM8.71 billion. Local institutions and foreign investors were net sellers to the tune of RM3.75 billion and RM4.96 billion, respectively,” MIDF Research said in its weekly fund flow report today.
However, the research firm pointed out that the pace of net selling by foreign investors has been downtrending. Last week’s net selling was 17.6% less than the previous week, it added.
“As the market reopened last Monday, foreign investors were net buyers amounting to RM7.97 million. Meanwhile, local institutions sold RM105.99 million net of local equities, with retailers as net buyers to the tune of RM98.02 million,” MIDF Research said.
“Foreign investors were net seller on Wednesday and Friday. Largest foreign outflow was recorded on Wednesday, with the smallest outflow on Friday at RM146.95 million and RM41.61 million respectively.”
Meanwhile, the largest net buying was on Thursday, which amounted to RM32.72 million.
MIDF Research said as for the retailers, they were net buyers every day last week.
“Largest net buying by the retailers was recorded on Monday at RM98.02 million and smallest net buying was on Friday to the tune of RM6.98 million. Cumulatively, for the week, retailers net bought RM154.68 million worth of equities in Bursa Malaysia,” it noted.
Meanwhile, local institutions recorded cumulative weekly net selling of RM6.8 million for the week ended July 23. Local institutions were net sellers on Monday and Thursday, with largest net selling on Monday to the tune of RM105.99 million.
In terms of participation the retail investors, local institutions and the foreign investors recorded a weekly movement of 10.82%, 16.58% and 11.38% respectively in average daily trade value.
In Asia, foreign investors turned net sellers last week.
“Based on the provisional aggregate data for the seven Asian exchanges (Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Malaysia) that we track, net inflow from investors classified as ‘foreign’ was at a tune of about US$2.44 billion worth of equities. This was primarily driven by outflows from Taiwan,” MIDF Research said.
Overall, of the markets that we tracked, Taiwan recorded the biggest weekly outflow at US$1.6 billion, followed by South Korea at US$593.4 million.
The research firm also noted that Malaysia’s inflation slowed further to 3.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) in June, from 4.4% y-o-y in the prior month. “While the moderation is within expectation taking into account the fading base effect, the latest inflation rate was marginally below our in-house forecast of 3.7% y-o-y and market consensus of 3.5% y-o-y.”
Brent crude oil price saw a 0.69% weekly movement last week, to close at US$74.10 per barrel last Friday.