What Are Broker Index, Foreign Net Buy, and "Saham Gorengan" for Indonesian Stocks on Pluang?
Broker Index is the share of an Indonesian stock's net trading volume captured by its top 3 brokers, calculated as (top 3 broker net volume ÷ total net volume) × 100, and a reading of 20% or higher is what Pluang's Broker & Foreign Screeners treat as concentrated activity. Foreign Net Buy is the difference between foreign investor buying and selling volume on a given trading day (foreign buy volume minus foreign sell volume, in shares or lots), tracked separately from domestic activity because the IDX reports foreign flow as its own distinct data category. "Saham gorengan" — literally "fried stocks" — is Indonesian retail-trader slang for stocks whose prices are pushed largely by coordinated trading rather than genuine business fundamentals, typically small-caps that show sudden, unusual volume spikes without a clear news catalyst behind them. All three concepts are specific to how the Indonesian market reports and discusses trading activity, and all three feed directly into Pluang's five Broker & Foreign Screeners.
Broker Index: measures how concentrated a stock's trading is among a handful of dominant trading houses ("broker" is Indonesian slang for these firms — conceptually similar to "smart money" or "institutional flow" elsewhere, though without an identical regulatory meaning). Three Pluang screeners — Big Broker Accumulation, Broker Bullish, and Broker Bearish — all use Broker Index ≥ 20% as their baseline criterion.
Foreign Net Buy: the IDX tracks foreign investor activity as a category separate from domestic trading, and Foreign Net Buy is simply that day's buy-minus-sell difference for foreign accounts. Two Pluang screeners use it: Foreign Uptrend (flags stocks where yesterday's foreign buy volume beat the prior 20-day average) and Positive Foreign Buy (ranks the 50 stocks with the largest positive net foreign buy yesterday, refreshed daily).
"Saham gorengan": small-cap stocks moved by coordinated buying, often showing 2–10× normal volume with no clear fundamental justification. Pluang's Volume Breakout screener (today's volume ≥ 2× the 20-day average) can flag both a genuine catalyst and saham gorengan activity — the screener has no way to tell which one it's looking at, so a match is a prompt to investigate, not a conclusion.
One reminder that applies to all three: these are historical flow signals, not predictions. Concentrated broker activity, foreign buying, and unusual volume can all reverse the very next trading day.
Related questions:
Q: Is "Broker" in these screeners the same thing as "smart money"?
Conceptually similar, but not identical. "Smart money" usually implies large institutional investors specifically, while "Broker" in this Indonesian context refers to the dominant trading houses on the IDX regardless of whose orders they're executing — the terms overlap in spirit but aren't interchangeable in a precise sense.
Q: Are foreign investors always right about which direction a stock will move?
No. Foreign Net Buy is one flow signal, not a forecast — foreign investors can be wrong on any given trade just like any other market participant. Pluang's Foreign Uptrend and Positive Foreign Buy screeners simply surface what foreign flow did yesterday; they make no claim about what will happen next.
Q: Should I avoid every stock flagged as potential "saham gorengan"?
That's a personal risk decision, not something Pluang prescribes. Many investors avoid these stocks because of the volatility and the risk of a sudden reversal once coordinated buying stops, while others deliberately trade them as short-term, higher-risk plays. The Volume Breakout screener gives you visibility into unusual volume — it doesn't tell you whether to buy, sell, or stay away.
Q: Why do Broker Index and Foreign Net Buy only refresh once a day instead of live?
Both figures are compiled from a full trading day's aggregated flow data rather than a single live tick, so they can only be calculated accurately once that day's session has closed — this is a characteristic of how the underlying data is reported, not a Pluang-specific delay, and applies equally to every broker Screener using this data.