PETALING JAYA: Foreign investors remain net sellers of Malaysian equities for the third straight week, lifting the year-to-date net withdrawals to RM18.26bil.
Malaysia, however, was not alone in witnessing foreign fund outflows as most Asian markets tracked by MBSB Research experienced net selling in the week ended Oct 24.
In its fund flow report, MBSB Research said Asian equity markets recorded US$1.74bil of net foreign outflows last week.
Only Indonesia, Thailand, and India registered net foreign inflows while the rest saw net selling activities, led by Taiwan, which posted the largest regional outflow.
“Taiwan extended its streak of net selling activity to two consecutive weeks, recording the largest outflow in the region at US$1.55bil,” stated MBSB Research yesterday.
The other markets – apart from Malaysia – were South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Foreign investors on Bursa Malaysia net sold RM14.6mil of equities, although this was significantly lower than the previous week’s net outflow of RM962.8mil.
MBSB Research said foreign investors were net sellers on two out of four trading days last week, with Wednesday seeing the highest net selling activity at RM73.3mil, followed by Tuesday at RM68.9mil.
Thursday and Friday saw net foreign buying activity, with RM97.5mil and RM30.1mil recorded respectively.
“The top three sectors that recorded net foreign inflows last week were consumer products and services (RM195.7mil), industrial products and services (RM83mil), and technology (RM66.9mil).
“The top three sectors that recorded net foreign outflows were healthcare (RM200.7mil), financial services (RM142.7mil), and telecommunication and media (RM52.4mil),” it said.
With the latest flows out from Bursa, MBSB Research pointed out that the 12-month rolling sum of foreign net equities trade as of Oct 24 has reached negative RM24.3bil.
This was higher than the negative RM24.1bil registered a week ago. Also, to put it into perspective, the 12-month rolling sum of foreign net equities trade on Bursa a year ago stood at RM4.4bil.
As for the local institutions, net purchases of equities extended to the third consecutive week, recording inflows of RM111.1mil.
Meanwhile, local retail investors extended to a seven-week consecutive net selling streak, posting a net outflow of RM96.5mil.
This was 3.7 times smaller than the previous week’s outflow of RM357.4mil.
“The average daily trading volume experienced a broad-based decrease last week, with local retailers and local institutions recording declines of 26.3% and 18.8%, respectively, while foreign investors saw a decrease of 25.1%,” MBSB Research noted.
