PETALING JAYA: As the Russian-Ukraine war escalated last week, foreign investors took shelter in commodity stocks, pushing their highest weekly net buying year-to-date (y-t-d) to RM1.1bil.

       This was followed by retail investors, where net buying rose 18% week-on-week (w-o-w) to RM231.5mil for the week of Feb 28 to March 4, said CIMB-CGS in its latest strategy report.

       In comparison, local institutional investors’ were net sellers as selling rose 65% wow to RM1.52bil.

       The research house noted that this was the highest weekly net sell registered in 2022.

       This brought their y-t-d net sell to RM4.2bil.

       They were net sellers of industrial products and financial services sectors and their top three net sell stocks were Petronas Chemical Bhd, Public Bank Bhd and CIMB Group Holdings Bhd.

       CIMB was the largest net buy stock for retail, nominee and proprietary investors, but the largest net sell stock by foreign institutional investors.

       Petronas Chemical was the largest net buy stock by foreign institutional investors, but the largest net sell stock by local institutional investors.

       Malayan Banking Bhd, meanwhile, was the second largest net buy stock by foreign institutional investors; but the largest net sell stock by nominee investors.

       As for short selling, CIMB, Tenaga Nasional Bhd and MyEG Services Bhd were the top three short-selling targets (in terms of trading value) last week.

       The three companies with the largest net short positions as at March 4, 2022 were Top Glove Holdings Bhd, Hartalega Holdings Bhd and JAKS Resources Bhd. The report said the three best performing sectors were plantation (5.5% w-o-w), industrial (2.2% w-o-w) and healthcare (0.1% w-o-w).For the week, the KLCI rose 0.8% and the average daily trading volume fell 16% w-o-w to 3.5 billion units, it said.

       The average daily trading value rose 11% w-o-w to RM3.7bil.

       Retail investors’ share of total trading value was 26% last week, while that of institutional investors was 51%, proprietary 10%, and nominees 13%, it adds.

       Despite the buying, foreign shareholding of Malaysian equities fell 0.1% month-on-month to 20.1%.

       The declining trend in foreign shareholdings started in May 2018 due to political uncertainties.

       It has since fallen 4.1% from its peak of 24.2% in March 2018 to 20.1% in February 2022.

       Even though foreign investors were net buyers last week, their net buying has failed to lift their foreign shareholding level, possibly because stocks with high foreign shareholding did not fare as well.