Retail investors were not only the largest net buyers for three consecutive weeks, but have raised their net buy flows by 72% week-on-week (w-o-w) between Dec 7-11 to RM734 million, indicating an even more bullish sentiment in the stock market, according to CGS-CIMB Research.
In a strategy note today, CGS-CIMB said this level represents the highest weekly net buy flows since the week of March 9-13, 2020 at RM824 million.
"Local retail investors remained the most optimistic about market prospects and were net buyers of RM734 million of equities last week, which represents a 72% w-o-w improvement from two weeks ago. This represents the highest weekly net buy by retail investors since the week of March 9 to 13," it said.
The research house identified the top five net buys by retail investors which were Public Bank Bhd, Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB), Top Glove Corp Bhd, My E.G. Services Bhd, and Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd, while their top five key net sell flows were CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, Genting Bhd, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), Press Metal Aluminium Holdings Bhd and Bursa Malaysia Bhd.
Year to date, retail investors were the largest net buyers of Top Glove, Genting and CIMB, and key net sellers of Hartalega Holdings Bhd, Press Metal and VS Industry Bhd.
On the other hand, CGS-CIMB observed that local institutional investors turned net sellers last week as they continued to reduce their position in Top Glove, which topped their net sell list, but some of the funds were noted to have been channelled back to banking stocks like CIMB and Maybank.
It noted that local institutional investors net sold RM295.3 million of equities last week from net buy of RM68.1 million two weeks ago
"Local institutional investors turned net seller due to their relentless selling in Top Glove on concerns over social issues as well as disruptions to its operations.
"The three stocks that witnessed the highest net outflows from domestic institutional investors last week were Top Glove (-RM342 million), Public Bank (RM91 million) and Kossan (RM88.7 million) while the three stocks that witnessed the highest net inflows were CIMB (RM233 million), Maybank (RM88 million) and TNB (RM84 million)," it said.
CGS-CIMB explained that investors in general have continued to switch into Covid-19 recovery/laggard play themes, with finance, consumer, energy and property sectors topping the gainers list.
It pointed out that finance (up 10.5% w-o-w), consumer (up 4.2%), property (up 3.8%) and energy (up 3.1%) were the four best-performing sectors last week, while the weakest-performing sectors last week were healthcare (down 2.6%) and technology (down 1.1%).
"The strong gains in banking counters pushed the finance index to positive territory for the first time this year," it added.
