Foreign net selling on Bursa rises to RM543.91m

PETALING JAYA: Foreign investor was net seller at the tune of RM543.91 million for the first week of October.

“Comparatively, for the cumulative data for the month of September, foreign investor was net seller to the tune of RM1.43 billion, bigger than the preceding August at RM1.19 billion worth of equities. If this trend continues, we might see higher foreign fund outflow for the month of October,“ MIDF Research said in its fund flow report.

Last week, retailers are net sellers of RM171.54 million worth of equities last week, with local institutions at RM715.48 million net during the same period. This marks the second consecutive week of local institution as net buyer in Bursa.

“The opposite pattern holds true for retailers as the first week of October saw the second consecutive week of net selling as retailers exit en masse, albeit smaller outflow. We opine that this could be due to the ending of the loan moratorium which retail investors might have decided to lock in the gains seen since March this year,“ said MIDF.

As market reopened on Monday last week, foreign investors sold RM292.6 million net of local equities, with retailers and local institutions as net buyers at RM47.5 million and RM245.2 million respectively.

However, this outflow lessen as the week went by, with Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s net selling fell to RM167.9 million and RM83.8 million respectively. The largest outflow was on Monday at RM292.60 million and smallest outflow was on Thursday at RM57.75 million.

This reversed on Friday with a foreign inflow of RM58.1 million. This is probably due to renewed interest in glove stocks as the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be on a cusp of a second wave. Furthermore, the financial markets were shocked by news that US President Donald Trump has contracted Covid-19.

“In terms of participation, the retail investors recorded a weekly decrease 19.37% in average daily trade value (ADTV) while the foreign investor experienced the decrease of ADTV of 3.66%. To note, local institutions also saw a decrease of 23.13% in weekly ADTV,” added MIDF.

Source: The Sun Daily