FOREIGN investors continued with their selling spree of Malaysian equities last week, marking the fifth consecutive week of net foreign fund outflows from Bursa Malaysia.
Last week’s net outflow stood at -RM336.9 mil, half the amount of the previous week’s -RM740.6 mil, according to MIDF Research.
“The only day that we saw net inflow from foreign investors who had been net sellers for 14 consecutive trading days was on Tuesday (Oct 4) at RM59.64 mil,” observed the research house in its weekly fund flow report. “However, the net selling trend continued again on Wednesday (Oct 5) and right up to Friday (Oct 7).”
The bulk of the foreign net outflows were on Friday (Oct 7) which coincided with the tabling of Budget 2023 at -RM143.36 mil and Monday (Oct 3) at -RM112.42 mil.
Meanwhile, foreigners also net sold on Wednesday (Oct 5) and Thursday (Oct 6) at -RM68.05 mil and -RM72.71 mil respectively.
The top three sectors which saw net outflows by foreign investors last week were financial services at -RM310.8 mil, technology (-RM52.7 mil) and consumer products and services (-RM42.1 mil).
The top three sectors which recorded net inflow were construction at RM117.8 mil, telecommunications and media (RM32.5 mil) and energy (RM27 mil).
Meanwhile, local institutions were net buyers for the third consecutive week, raking in RM413.47 mil last week. They were net buyers during every session of the week except on Tuesday (Oct 4) when their net sold -RM33.04 mil.
The net buying days were consistently above the RM100 mil mark with the highest amount observed on Friday (Oct 7) at RM137.71 mil.
However, local retailers turned net sellers at -RM76.56 mil last week after having emerged net buyers for the past three weeks.
They net sold -RM26.6 mil, -RM33.01 mil and -RM31.93 mil on Tuesday (Oct 4), Wednesday (Oct 5) and Thursday (Oct 6) respectively but were net buyers on Monday (Oct 3) and Friday (Oct 7) at RM9.33 mil and RM5.65 mil respectively.
To date, international funds have been net buyers for 24 out of the 40 weeks of 2022 with a total net inflow of RM6.29 bil.
Local institutions were net sellers for 29 out of 40 weeks with a total net outflow of –RM8.47 bil while local retailers have been net buyers for 26 out of 40 weeks of 2022. Year-to-date (YTD), they have been net buyers at RM2.19 bil.
In terms of participation, there was a decline in average daily trade value (ADTV) across the board, led by foreign investors at -31.53%, local institutions at -17.76% and retailers at -9.89%.
In comparison with another three Southeast Asian markets tracked by MIDF Research last week, Indonesia was the only market which posted a net inflow of foreign funds at US$228.83 mil with Malaysia recording the highest net outflow at -US$72.55 mil followed by Thailand (-US$32.55 mil) and the Philippines (-US$1.06 mil).
The top three stocks with the highest net money inflow last week were Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd (RM7.91 mil), Press Metal Aluminium Holdings Bhd (RM4.09 mil) and Telekom Malaysia Bhd (RM3.93 mil). – Oct 11, 2022
Main photo credit: Bernama
