During the 1H2021, institutional investors were net buyers in the financial sector, while retail investors were net sellers, according to UOB Kay Hian analyst Adrian Loh and the Singapore research team.

Financials took up four of the top five stocks bought by institutional investors. Yangzijiang, the only non-financial counter, rounded up the top five.

On the other hand, retail investors were net sellers of the three Singapore banks, DBS, OCBC and UOB, as well as Yangzijiang and Singapore Press Holdings (SPH).

Apart from the divergence in opinion between institutional and retail investors pertaining to the financial sector, the team has seen other divergences in counters such as SGX, SPH and Singtel.

However, in the month of June, institutional investors were negative on the financial sector. Instead, the top five stocks that were bought were Singapore Exchange (SGX), CapitaLand Limited, SPH, Singapore Technologies Engineering (ST Engineering) and Suntec REIT.

“It would appear that institutional investors were net sellers of the Singapore market in June with Singtel and OCBC witnessing significant selling,” notes the team in a Singapore funds flow report dated July 12.

In the same period, retail investors were “significant buyers” of financial stocks such as OCBC, DBS and UOB, along with Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) and City Developments Limited (CDL).

Tech stocks such as AEM, UMS and Nanofilm, which have performed well year-to-date (y-t-d), were sold off by retail investors.

To Loh and the team, retail investors were generally more bullish on the Singapore market.

To this end, institutional investors saw an average return of 24.4% for its top 10 most bought counters, while retail investors saw a loss of 3.5% on average across its top 10 most bought stocks, says the team in a Singapore funds flow report dated July 12.

Conversely, institutional investors saw an average loss of 1.2% for the top 10 stocks that were most sold off. Retail investors, on the other hand, saw a gain of 22.6% in the stocks that the group sold off.

“In our view, retail investor selling in 1H2021 could have been motivated by profit-taking on stocks that outperformed in the past 52 weeks. If we look at the top 10 stocks sold by retail investors over a 52-week period to end-June, these 10 stocks had an average share price return of 46%,” explains Loh.

On this, the team has identified Ascendas REIT (A-REIT), Genting Singapore, OCBC, Sembcorp Industries, Sea Limited, SGX, Singtel and Yangzijiang as their top picks among large-cap stocks in Singapore.

On small- and mid-caps, the team “likes” Frencken, Hong Leong Asia, Innotek and UMS.

The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) closed 12.32 points higher or 0.4% up at 3,152.30 on July 16.

<i>Photo: Albert Chua / The Edge Singapore</i>

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