Daily Times

Karachi: Pakistan shares ended weekend session on bearish note amid lack of triggers and range bound activity. The main KSE 100 index slipped 45 points or 0.09 percent to close at 48,971level.

Market continued to struggle for direction throughout the day and witnessed dreary activity where turnover on KSE100 Index clocked in at only $66 million, down 22 percent as compared to current month’s average.

Cements and financials largely witnessed profit-taking and ended lower barring Habib Bank that ended in green after seeing on-system crosses reportedly by foreign institutions.

Meanwhile, K-Electric saw a bounce back and dominated volumes chart as investors bet on a possible positive outcome from meetings with regulator that can clear concerns over recent tariff reduction and threat to M&A deal with Shanghai Electric.
On Prime Minister’s directive a committee was formed to review Nepra’s decision regarding KE’s tariff cut.

This resulted in KEL to gain 3.4%.

FFBL announced that its subsidiary FFBL power company is expected to commence its commercial operations from April 2017.

On Friday overall, volumes increased by 11.3 percent to 353 million shares, while value decreased by 14.3 percent to Rs11.3 billion/$107 million.

Expect range bound trading to continue into next week with market continuing to experience dull volumes in absence of major triggers amid looming uncertainty on domestic political front and silence over progress on leverage product.

Moreover, Monetary Policy decision due today (Saturday) will likely be a non-event as most expect no change in discount rate, said analysts at Elixir Securities.