KUALA LUMPUR (June 13):  Foreign investors purchased RM249.8 million net in the open market last week, maintaining the amount of foreign buying just above RM200 million for the third week running, according to MIDF Research.

In its weekly fund flow report today, the MIDF Research Strategy team said there was relatively heavy foreign buying on Monday amid optimism from Wall Street’s record high rally on Friday the week before.

It said this more than offset the marginal selling on Wednesday and Friday.

The research house said foreign buying streak has now stretched to 18 straight weeks.

“In fact, the cumulative foreign net purchases in 2017 has reached RM10.39 billion, offsetting approximately 35% of the total cumulative net outflow recorded in 2014-2016,” it said.

MIDF Research said foreign participation took a beating last week.

It said foreign average daily trade value (ADTV) declined by almost half to RM999.0 million from RM1.94 billion the week before, the largest weekly drop this year.

Meanwhile, it said the daily foreign trade value only exceeded RM1 billion once during last week.

It said the retail market remained slow.

“The retail ADTV increased marginally by 0.9%, staying below the RM900 million level. This is the sixth week this year that retailers became net buyers,” it said.