KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 (Xinhua) -- In the penultimate week before the 14th General Elections (GE14) of Malaysia, global investors turned net sellers on the country's equities for the first time in four weeks.
According to MIDF Research fund flow report on Monday, foreign investors had withdrawn up to 438.4 million ringgit (111.23 million U.S. dollars) from Malaysia's bourse last week.
However, Malaysia remained the only market with inflows among the four ASEAN markets that the research house tracks so far this year, with year-to-date net inflow standing at 3.02 billion ringgit. The three ASEAN markets are Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.
"It seems that foreign investors are shifting to the sidelines earlier than expected before this year's elections," said MIDF. Malaysia will have its GE14 on Wednesday.
Tracing back to the penultimate week before the 13th General Election (GE13), MIDF said, foreign investors snapped up 750.4 million ringgit net of local equities, and foreign attrition was only seen on the last trading day before GE13 which only amounted to 91.7 million ringgit net outflow.
Indeed, foreign selling was seen across the ASEAN board, with Thailand being the biggest victim of outflows last week in ASEAN, as global investors offloaded net 355.3 million U.S. dollars.
The Philippines registered a third week of dissipating outflows as foreign investors only sold net 26.6 million U.S. dollars last week, the lowest ever so far for the year. Attrition in Indonesia was cut by almost half to net 192.9 million U.S. dollars.