Foreign investors offload RM397m equities

PETALING JAYA: Foreign investors offloaded RM396.8 million last week, the highest amount since the second week of September but foreign participation rate was low, said MIDF Research.
“General foreign investor activity on Bursa remained suppressed last week, but there was a notable pick-up in trading aggressiveness. Except on Monday, when there was marginal foreign buying, selling dominated the rest of the trading week,” it said in its fund flow report yesterday.
It said that foreigners sold RM162.6 million on Wednesday and RM220 million on Thursday. Note that the RM220 million attrition on Thursday was the 24th day that the amount had exceeded RM200 million this year.
“Last week’s attrition reduced the cumulative net foreign inflow into shares listed on Bursa to an estimated RM2 billion, down from a peak of RM6.47 billion, which was the figure in April.
“This means that since April, foreign investors have redeemed about RM4.47 billion. The amount is still modest relative to the RM19.5 billion and RM6.9 billion net outflow in 2015 and 2014 respectively,” it added.
MIDF Research said general investors’ participation deteriorated sharply last week with the average daily value of shares traded (ADTV) of foreigners dropping 18% to RM734 million, the third lowest in a trading week this year.
“It was even lower than the ADTV recorded during the Chinese New Year and Hari Raya weeks,” it said.
Meanwhile, retail participation remained weak even after the Budget 2017 announcement.
“Retail ADTV has dipped below RM500 million four weeks in a row now. The market has not seen the extent of retail withdrawal from the market since early 2013.”