Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 17, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign selling of Malaysian shares eased for the second consecutive week, narrowing to RM54.2 million last week, compared with RM82.9 million in the previous week, according to MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd.

In a weekly fund flow report yesterday, the research house said international investors continued to dispose of Malaysian stocks for the fourth straight week.

“Nonetheless, it was the second week in a row whereby foreign selling levels had eased, declining from RM82.9 million net in the previous week to RM54.2 million net last week. It was the second lowest attrition experienced this year after the one recorded not so long ago in August which amounted to RM48.5 million net,” MIDF said.

Foreign investors bought and sold RM1.96 billion and RM2.02 billion worth of shares respectively on the open market last week.

MIDF added that selling dominated the majority of the last trading week, except for last Monday and last Friday which saw marginal foreign buying below RM 30 million each day.

“There was a notable peak in foreign selling [last] Friday at RM73 million net, as the positive Malaysian data released, which included distributive trade and industrial production, did not act as a strong catalyst to attract foreign buying,” MIDF said.

“We note that last week’s foreign sell-off was in conformity with what was seen in Southeast Asian peers, notably Indonesia and the Philippines,” it added.

It added that last week’s attrition reduced the cumulative net foreign inflow into shares listed on Bursa Malaysia to RM9.47 billion net, which was slightly lower than the peak of RM11.08 billion in September, but the cumulative amount is still higher than the RM3.01 billion and RM19.5 billion recorded in 2016 and 2015 respectively.

“Foreign participation was muted with the foreign average daily trade value (ADTV) remaining slightly unchanged, only increasing by 5% to RM795 million from RM757 million, staying below the RM800 million level for the second week,” it said.

“In contrast, the retail market rebounded as the retail ADTV increased by 15.2% to be near the RM1 billion mark,” MIDF added.

Meanwhile, MIDF said that globally, equity markets remained strong last week as investors digested economic data and corporate earnings, adding that international funds made a comeback into Asia after 11 consecutive weeks of attrition.

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