KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign investors remained net sellers of local stocks on Bursa Malaysia for the third straight week.
But at RM27.7 million last week, it is a much slower net outflow compared to RM113.5 million the week before.
MIDF Research said the net selling on Monday and Tuesday could not reverse the net buying thereafter.
They net sold RM107.4 million on Monday and RM58.3 million on Tuesday before net buying RM95.5 million on Wednesday, RM11.8 million on Thursday and RM30.8 million on Friday.
The top three sectors that saw net foreign inflows were utilities (RM211.6 million), property (RM40.4 million) and energy (RM32.9 million).
The bottom three sectors with net foreign outflows for the week were financial products and services (RM226.0 million), industrial products and services (RM33.5 million) and consumer products and services (RM30.2 million).
Year-to-date, foreigners have net sold RM2.70 billion.
Local institutions on the other hand, maintained their net buying pace for the fourth consecutive week with an amount of RM60.6m last week.
The net buying amounts of RM92.3 million on Monday and RM87.7 million on Tuesday was sufficient to cushion the outflows on Wednesday (RM79.6 million), Thursday (RM11.1 million) and Friday (RM28.8 million).
Year-to-date, local institutions have net bought RM3.29 billion of equities on Bursa.
Meanwhile, local retail investors continued to net sell, now going into the ninth consecutive week. The net selling amount came up to RM33.0 million last week.
"They only net bought RM15.1 million on Monday but were net sellers for the rest of the week," MIDF Research said.
Year-to-date, local retailers have net sold RM583.6 million.
In terms of participation, there was a decline in average daily trading volume across the board among foreign investors (-51.1per cent), institutional investors (-28.4 per cent) and retail investors (-26.6 per cent).