Daily Times

Pakistan equities closed the week on a positive not to settle benchmark KSE100 index up at 43,681 levels, making an intraday high of 224 point and a low of 48 points.

Market opened positive and traded sideward throughout the day, however gained some points towards the close after institution interest.

“Stocks closed higher led by selected scrips across the board amid surging global crude prices, strong data on auto sales and oil production for Jul-May’18 and reports on decline in circular debt in the energy sector”, said Ahsan Mehanti, senior equity analyst.

Cements and Energy stocks shored up the index whereas Financials remained in the red. HBL (-1.25%), UBL (-0.38%) and MCB (-0.77%) were the major laggards in financials. Moreover, today’s major heavyweights namely, OGDC (+0.91%), PPL (+1.81%), ENGRO (+1.43%), POL (+1.17%) and HUBC (+0.70%) cumulatively contributed +113 points. Traded volumes slightly improved by 5 percent DoD to 118 million shares while value traded increased to US$53 million.

Top volume stocks were BOP (+1.29%), BAFL (-0.16%) and TRG (+2.20%).

During the week speculations ahead of SC verdict on Tax Amnesty Scheme, revision in local POL prices and surging local cement, auto prices and World Bank approval on $565 million energy, water projects played a catalyst role in bullish close.

After gaining for last 3-weeks, index lost 0.6% WoW as investor’s remained concerned over external account issues faced by the country and opted for profit taking. Concerns on the likely impact of rupee devaluation on select sector kept Automobile, Cement and Engineering under pressure.

Resultantly, Engineering, Cements and Automobile Sectors were down 5-6% during the week on fear of margin dilution owing to rupee devaluation. In contrast, Oil & Gas Exploration (E&Ps) rose 3% on the back of higher oil prices (up 2% WoW to $66/bbl.

Market participation during the week showed a slowdown, where volumes and value both went down by 48%, and 28%, respectively.

Foreigners remained net seller for the six consecutive week amounting to US$4.4 million as compared to net selling of US$29.5 million last week. On the other hand, amongst local investors, companies were net buyers of US$10.6 million and Mutual Fund were net buyer of US$2.1 million.

Equity analyst expect that the market will remain volatile and choppy with flows from local and foreign institutions directing the market.

Pakistan stock market will remain closed from Friday till Monday on account of Eid-ul-Fitr.

Published in Daily Times, June 15^th 2018.