Foreign investors return to Bursa

MIDF says net buying snaps nine weeks of outflows

PETALING JAYA: Bursa Malaysia seems to have been able to reverse its recent trend of nine consecutive weeks of foreign money outflows after these foreign funds were recorded to have bought up RM25.5mil of local equities last week.

In its weekly fund flow report, MIDF Research said yesterday that the local market recorded a foreign net outflow of RM86.3mil last Monday, which is the highest in nine trading days while the local bourse gained 0.56% to close at 1,679 points on that day.

The level of foreign net selling slightly eased on the next day to – US$75.9mil, it said.

“Wednesday was the turning point for the week as foreign investors bought RM16.4mil net, snapping three days of foreign selling. This was in conformity with other Asian peers that we track such as Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines,” MIDF Research said.

“The return of foreign investors to Malaysia was inevitable amidst the regional upbeat sentiment from the three-day discussion between the US and China,” it added.

It noted that the net foreign buying level reached RM106.7mil last Friday which is the highest daily foreign net inflows in nearly a month.

MIDF Research noted that there was a lot of buying support given the progress in US-China trade relations and the rise in Brent crude oil prices on growing optimism over Opec production cuts.

Among individual

stocks, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd saw the highest net inflows of RM27.88mil last week.

However it commented that KLK’s share price lost 0.41% for the previous week, noting that this may be indicating a buy on weakness action among some investors.

“CIMB Group Holdings Bhd recorded the second highest net money inflow of RM26.72mil.

“Hong Leong Financial Group Bhd saw the third highest net money inflow of RM9.99mil,” it said.

Meanwhile, the top three stocks that saw net money outflows last week were Hong Leong Bank Bhd of -RM16.51mil, Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd amounting to -RM12.65mil and Public Bank Bhd totalling -RM11.11mil.

The FBM KLCI fell yesterday by 7.06 points or 0.42% to 1,676.16 at its close.

money

Market breadth was negative with 557 losers while 286 counters gained and 292 counters were unchanged.

Some 2.18 billion shares worth RM1.42bil changed hands.

The local stock market performance was in line with its peers in Asia where markets including in countries such as China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand all fell.

Asian markets fell after disappointing trade data from China showed that December’s exports and imports fell unexpectedly, which highlighted again the possible slowdown in the North Asian country.

At the time of writing, US stock exchange futures indicated a firm negative open for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite Index.