PETALING JAYA: Offshore investors upped the ante last week and acquired RM171.7 million net of local equities, six times more than the amount bought in the week before.
According to MIDF Research, international funds sold equity on Bursa on Monday and Tuesday but at a moderate level below RM25 million net.
“Risk aversion was stoked by Iran’s comments that there is no more room for a diplomatic solution with the US following the imposition of new sanctions,” it said in its fund flow report.
On Wednesday, international investors made a comeback, buying RM73.1 million net of local equities despite comments of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis which downplayed the need for aggressive US monetary easing.
On Thursday, the level of foreign net buying tapered slightly to RM53.8 million, after the US said it would place substantial additional tariffs on goods on China if no progress is made on a trade deal when both sides meet at the G20 meeting.
“Bursa saw the highest foreign net inflow during the week of RM83.7 million on Friday ahead of the highly anticipated US-China presidential meeting on Saturday. This was in contrast to other regional peers namely, Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan which experienced foreign net outflows exceeding RM40 million,” said MIDF Research.
For the month of June 2019, foreign investors acquired a total of RM134.6 million net, marking the first foreign net inflow in five months.
On a half yearly basis, the foreign net outflow from Malaysia stands at RM4.66 billion which is lower than the RM6.8 billion foreign net outflow seen during the same period last year.
While foreign investors continued entering Bursa, they also emerged as the investor group with the largest decline in terms of average daily traded value of 28.6% to RM1.03 billion.
“Nevertheless, level of participation in three weeks is still deemed healthy as it exceeds RM1 billion,” MIDF Research noted.
