KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 7): Foreign investors' net purchases of Malaysian shares amounted to RM151.2 million last week after they acquired and sold RM2.31 billion and RM2.16 billion worth of equities on the open market respectively, according to MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd.

In its fund flow report today, MIDF said international investors bought Malaysian shares despite the selloff in Asian share markets like South Korea and Thailand.

"Global funds continued to retreat from Asian equity last week. Based on provisional aggregate data from the seven Asian exchanges that we track, investors classified as 'foreign' offloaded -US$1.41 billion, the highest attrition so far this year.

"There was a bit of unease (in Malaysia) as international investors were selling at the start of the week. Nonetheless, the outflow was reversed by purchases from Tuesday to Thursday. We note that the foreign buying peaked on Wednesday following optimism on Wall Street boosted by Apple's impressive 3Q17 earnings," MIDF said.

Malaysia's cumulative July foreigner net share purchases amounted to RM420.9 million.

"With seven consecutive months of foreign buying, the cumulative year-to-date inflow is nearing the RM11 billion mark at RM10.8 billion net. This has offset approximately one third of the cumulative outflow from 2014 to 2016," MIDF said.