ON a Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday-shortened trading week, foreign investors continued to net sell Malaysian equities for the third consecutive week at a rate of -RM57.8 mil, bringing the year-to-date (YTD) net selling of Malaysian equities by foreign funds to -RM200.77 mil.
The week posted only net foreign outflows with the heaviest outflow occurring on Friday (Jan 27) to the tune of -RM30.67 mil and Wednesday (Jan 25) to the tune of -RM26.51 mil while Thursday (Jan 26) was rather muted at –RM660,000, according to MIDF Research.
The top three sectors that saw net foreign inflows last week were consumer products and services (RM54.6 mil), energy (RM26.3 mil) and healthcare (RM21.8 mil) while the top three sectors that saw net foreign outflows were financial services (-RM140.5 mil), telecommunications and media (-RM14.3 mil) and construction (-RM14.1 mil).
“Local institutions remained net buyers for the third consecutive week after net buying RM78.9 mil worth of equities last week,” MIDF Research pointed out in its weekly fund flow report.
“There were net inflows of RM57.3 mil and RM35.5 mil on Wednesday (Jan 25) and Friday (Jan 27) respectively while Thursday (Jan 26) saw a net outflow of -RM14 mil by the local institutions.”
Thus far this year, local institutions have been net buyers of domestic equities with a total net inflow of RM685.39 mil.
Meanwhile, local retailers net sold -RM21 mil last week. They net sold -RM30.8 mil on Wednesday (Jan 25) and -RM4.8 mil on Friday (Jan 27) while Thursday (Jan 26) was a net buying day at RM14.6 mil. YTD, local retailers have net sold -RM484.62 mil of Malaysian equities.
In terms of participation, there was an increase in average daily trading volume (ADTV) among local retailers (19.2%) and foreign investors (4.6%). The local institutions meanwhile recorded a declined in weekly ADTV at -0.9%.
In comparison with another four Southeast Asian markets tracked by MIDF Research last week, only Malaysia saw a net foreign outflow of US$13.6 mil while Indonesia posted the biggest inflow at US$114 mil, followed by Thailand (US$88.9 mil), the Philippines (US$32.7 mil) and Vietnam (US$22.3 mil).
The top three stocks with the highest net money inflow from foreign investors last week were Genting Bhd (RM21.5 mil), Tenaga Nasional Bhd (RM15.6 mil) and Genetec Technology Bhd (RRM15.2 mil). – Jan 30, 2023