The foreign investment in Malaysian equities rose threefold from the previous week’s RM131.8 million.

In its fund flow report for the week ended Feb 9, 2024, the research house said foreigners recorded net buying every day, with Tuesday witnessing the highest inflow of RM188.9 million.

“The sectors with the highest net foreign inflows were financial services (RM211.2 million), utilities (RM200.7 million) and technology (RM56.3 million),” it said.

Meanwhile, the highest net foreign outflows were plantation (-RM36.4 million), healthcare (-RM27.5 million), and industrial products and services (-RM15.4 million).

MIDF said local institutions persisted in net selling domestic equities for the third consecutive week, amounting to RM276.6 million.

“The financial services sector (-RM218.7 million) saw the highest net outflow by this investor group, with them disposing of stocks such as Maybank (-RM88.5 million), CIMB Group (-RM54.5 million) and Public Bank (-RM44.5 million),” it said.

Besides that, it said local retailers resumed net selling on Bursa at (-RM124.1 million) after briefly engaging in net buying of RM9.5 million the week earlier.

In terms of participation, MIDF said there were increases in average daily trading volume (ADTV) among local retailers (-36.5%), local institutions (-31.7%) and foreign investors (-35.5%).

As for Asia, the research house added that foreign investors continued to purchase Asian equities for the third week in a row, with net buying totalling US$389.2 million (RM1.85 billion) across the eight markets monitored before closing for the Chinese New Year.

The eight markets were India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.