PETALING JAYA: Foreign funds disposed of RM447.7 million net of local equities last week, the largest in nine weeks.
“For the third week running, foreign funds remained net sellers on Bursa, marking the fourth weekly outflow so far this year,“ MIDF Research said in its fund flow report today.
The local bourse gained 0.2% on Monday to settle at 1,725 points as US President Donald Trump said that he will extend the deadline to raise tariffs on Chinese goods beyond last week as progress was made between the two nations.
Nonetheless, foreign investors sold RM49.6 million net on Monday as the decline in consumer prices in January for the first time in a decade remained in investors’ minds.
On both Tuesday and Wednesday, the level of foreign net selling tapered to below RM20 million at RM14.7 million. The reduction of foreign net selling occurred despite the geopolitical tension between India and Pakistan.
Foreign net selling then peaked on Thursday at RM211.6 million, the highest in a day so far in 2019 following the failure of the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi. Friday’s foreign net selling was still high at RM157.2 million net as the changes for the MSCI index came into effect, causing foreign funds to rebalance their portfolios in anticipation of the increased weighting of China.
MIDF said for the month of February 2019, international investors dumped RM815.6 million net. This brings the year-to-date foreign net inflow into Malaysia to RM53.3 million or US$10.4 million.
“In comparison to regional peers, on the regional front, Malaysia remains as the nation with the lowest foreign net inflow amongst the four Asean markets we monitor with Indonesia taking the lead with a year-to-date net inflow of US$690.9 million or RM2.8 billion.
“We note that participation amongst the three investor groups remained healthy. However, only foreign investors saw a 0.6% increase in terms of average daily traded value (ADTV) last week while local institutions and retail investors experienced a drop more than 4% in their ADTV,“ it added.
