KUALA LUMPUR (June 27): Despite Brexit, foreign selling on Bursa was marginal last week, according to MIDF Research.

In his weekly fund flow report today, MIDF Research head Zulkifli Hamzah said this was attributable to the fact that foreigners had been selling for the ninth consecutive week.

He said the net amount offloaded by foreign investors declined substantially to only RM134.3 million last week from RM1.01 billion the week prior.

He said it was the lowest outflow in nine weeks.

He explained that the estimates are based on transactions in the open market which excluded off-market deals.

Bursa was closed on Wednesday (June 22) for holiday.

Zulkifli said foreigners were net sellers on two out of four trading days last week.

He said the week opened on a weak note, as there was spillover selling from the preceding Friday (June 24).

"However, foreigners turned net buyers on Tuesday (June 21) mopping up RM97.3 million.

"It was the highest daily purchase since April 21 this year. Foreigners continued to buy on Thursday (June 23), after the break," he said.

Nonetheless, Zulkifli said the buying momentum halted on Friday amid the Brexit shock with a heavy attrition of RM216.8 million.

He said that as of last Friday, year-to-date cumulative net foreign fund flow into shares listed on Bursa has dipped into the negative territory for the first time since Feb 26 this year.

He said last week's foreign withdrawal has reduced the cumulative flow to an estimated RM33.7 million.

He said foreigners had offloaded RM19.5 billion and RM6.9 billion in 2015 and 2014 respectively.

Zulkifli said foreign participation rate remained moderate last week.

He said it edged up to RM853.2 million, up 5% from prior week.

He said excluding the outlier data point three weeks ago due to foreigners' mid-year portfolio rebalancing, their participation rate has remained subdued at less than RM1 billion for four consecutive weeks.

Zulkifli said local institution provided support to the market by loading up RM154.8 million on Bursa last week.

Meanwhile, he said its participation rate rose by RM345.4 million to RM1.95 billion from prior week's RM1.6 billion.

He said retail buyers turned net sellers last week after an active buying of RM213.1 million the week prior.

He said they offloaded equities amounting to RM20.5 million, while their participation rate improved by 8.8% to RM530.9 million.