Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan equities closed Thursday in negative after benchmark KSE-100 Index ended the seven-day positive run by dropping as much as 1.3% to settle over 42,700 level amid continuing political noise which dampened investors’ interest after an accountability court issued arrest warrants for Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and ordered the Punjab government to release judicial report of the Model Town incident.

The market remained in a bearish mode throughout the day where the benchmark KSE-100 index closed 572 points (-1.32%) down at 42,775 points. Volumes deteriorated by 26% DoD standing at 166 million shares as compared to 223 million shares in the previous trading session.

Negativity in the market triggered after Lahore High Court ordered provincial authorities to release the Model Town report. Many heavyweights from the banking sector including HBL (-2.00%), MCB (-3.00%) and UBL (-1.50%) contributed to the negativity in the overall market. POL (-1.72%) and PPL (-1.26%) from the E&P sector also closed in the red trajectory. Fertilizer sector closed (-1.72%) lower than its previous day close as FFBL (-3.67%), EFERT (-2.19%) and FFC (-0.43%) closed negative.

Top 5 Index point contributors to index decline were HBL (-2%), MCB (-3%), ENGRO (-2.4%), UBL (-1.5%) and NBP (-3.9%) deducting 202 points from index while KEL (+1. 3%) BAFL (+0 .5%) NRL (+0.6%) SNBL (+2 .2%) and PSMC (+0.6%) added 12 points.

On the sector front, commercial banks lost 184 points whereas fertilizer sector contributed 91 points to the index decline.

Foreigners remained net sellers of US$1.6 million on Thursday as against buying seen during the last 7 days.

Experts expect that the concerns over domestic politics and macros will continue to dampen sentiments in the near-term while institutional flows primarily from foreigners will remain crucial in days ahead in bringing the market out of its current bearish phase.

Published in Daily Times, September 22^nd 2017.