Foreign selling on Bursa dipped to RM800m last week

PETALING JAYA: Foreign investors sold RM800.4 million on Bursa Malaysia last week, lower than the RM948.1 million offloaded in the prior week, said MIDF Research.
“Malaysian equity has been subjected to foreign money attrition since early May. The heaviest of the selldown appears to be in the past and the foreign money currently flowing out is, at most, residual. Hence, the heavy tide out of Asian equities last week was more contained on Bursa,” it said in its fund flow report yesterday.
The RM800.4 million offloaded was the seventh highest weekly outflow so far this year, estimated based on transactions in the open market, which excluded off-market deals.
According to MIDF Research, foreign investors were actually net buyers on Monday and Tuesday, albeit moderately. “This was in contrast to that in the TIPs markets where foreign selling was reported for the two-day total.”
However, the buying reversed abruptly on Wednesday and continued for the rest of the week, MIDF Research noted.
It added that the attrition turned ugly on Friday as the amount offloaded amounted to RM690.9 million, the highest in a day so far this year.
Despite the attrition last week, foreign investors remained net purchaser on a cumulative year-to-date basis but the amount has shrunk to only RM261 million from a peak of RM6.47 billion in April. This means that RM6.21 million has been redeemed since April. The net outflows in 2015 and 2014 were RM19.5 billion and RM6.9 billion, respectively.
MIDF Research noted that foreign participation remained surprisingly moderate with the foreign average daily value of shares traded (ADTV) remaining below the RM1 billion mark at RM994 million.
It said the market was well supported by local institutions last week and retail investors “came to life” last week with retail ADTV increasing 37% to RM643 million.
“It was the highest in 12 weeks and the first time it exceeded the RM500 million mark in six weeks. However, the buying on dips conviction was weak as buying and selling amount were almost equal last week,” it added.