The inflow of foreign funds into Bursa Malaysia last week remained sizeable as foreign investors bought, on a net basis, RM308 million worth of Malaysian stocks for the seventh consecutive week.

For the year until last Friday the cumulative net inflow of foreign funds into Malaysian equities amounted to RM9.5 billion.

"It was much higher compared with only RM1.9 billion registered for the entire 2011," MIDF Research said in its 'Fund Flow Report' today.

Since January 2010, cumulative net purchase of Bursa-listed shares by foreigners amounted to RM26.6 billion.

Meanwhile, local retailers continued to be net sellers for the tenth consecutive week with sales declining to RM62 million, the lowest in seven weeks.

The report revealed that the participation rate also dropped significantly to RM747 million.

"It appears that local retailers are slowly retreating to the sidelines again after five weeks of moderate trading," it noted, adding that local institutions continued to take profit for the seventh week running with net sales amounting to RM246 million.
Daily average participation rate of local institutions stayed elevated at RM1.67 billion, it said. -- Bernama