KUALA LUMPUR (March 27): Foreign selling of Malaysian equity on Bursa Malaysia narrowed to RM107.1 million last week from RM536 million the prior week.

In its weekly fund flow report on Monday (March 27), MIDF Research said the highest net selling occurred last Monday (March 20), at RM88.5 million, followed by RM59.43 million on last Thursday.

It said all other days showed net inflows with a sum of RM40.8 million.

“Foreign investors have been net sellers for the 15 trading days, since March 1.

“They have net sold RM1.89 billion year-to-date. Out of the 12 weeks so far this year, they have been net sellers for nine weeks,” it said.

MIDF said the top three sectors that saw net foreign inflows were healthcare (RM90 million), transportation and logistics (RM24.4 million) and construction (RM15.9 million), while the bottom three sectors that saw net foreign outflows were industrial products and services (RM70.5 million), utilities (RM50.5 million) and consumer products and services (RM49.2 million).

Meanwhile, it said local institutions continued to support domestic equities, net buying for the fourth consecutive week.

The research house said local institutions net bought RM13.5 million last week, lower in comparison to the highest weekly amount in 2023.

MIDF said similar to foreign funds, local institutions also showed a mixed bag of investment last week with the strongest inflows seen last Monday at RM56.8 million, and largest outflow seen last Friday at RM77.9 million.

“As opposed to foreign investors, they have been net buyers every day since March 1 except for March 22 and March 24.

“They have net bought RM1.78 billlion of equities, with nine out of 12 weeks net buying.

MIDF said local retailers turned net buyers at a rate of RM84.7 million last week.

“Likewise, the foreign funds and local institutions, they showed three days of net bought and two days of net sold last week.

“The strongest net inflow was recorded last Friday at RM65.2 million while the largest net outflows happened last Tuesday at RM21.1 milllion,” it said.

MIDF said that year-to-date, they have net bought RM99.5 million of equities, with seven out of 12 weeks of net buying.

It said that in terms of participation, there was a drop in average daily trading volume (ADTV) among local retailers by 16.3%, local institutions by 25.3% and foreign investors by 41.1%.

Commenting on the global markets, MIDF said major indices on Wall Street ended in the green last week, in parallel with other major indices across the globe.

It said only three out of the 20 indices that the research house tracks saw losses for the week.

“The S&P500 added 1.4% for the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 1.2% while the Nasdaq rose by 1.7%.

“In Asia, advancers were TAIEX at 3%, PSEi at 2.1% and Hang Seng at 2%, while the decliners for the week were FBM KLCI (0.85%), Sensex (0.8%) and ASX 200 (0.57%),” it said.