Daily Times

Benchmark KSE-100 Index continued its downward trend on Monday and closed -2 percent on economic concerns and dearth of liquidity. The Pakistan Stock Market further plummeted 750 points to close at 36,767 levels.

Investor enthusiasm was low as selling pressure prevailed despite the government’s announcement of retracing to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package. Moreover, the rupee further declined Rs1.40 against the dollar trading between Rs133.20 to Rs133.40.

Retail names dominated the volume charts as Unity Foods Limited (UNITY) gaining 1.2 percent and K-Electric Limited (KEL) losing 1.34 percent collectively traded 16.3 million shares.

PSX Stock Brokers Association held a meeting with Finance Minister and SECP officials to review confidence building measures as market is down 10.3 percent MTD.

“We expect recent sell-off to taper off around 35,000-35,500 levels while we prefer Financials and Energy Stocks on weakness”, said Murtaza Jafar, an analyst at Elixir Research.

An equity analyst Danish Ladhani said there were whispers that the market is expecting the removal of Lucky Cement UCK and United Bank Limited (UBL) from the MSCI large Cap index to small cap in the next MSCI reclassification due on the 13th of November that further hampered the market.

Top heavyweights, PPL (-2.70%), OGDC (-0.30%), HBL (-0.89%), ENGRO (-2.52%), MCB (-3.86%), UBL (-0.04%), FFC (-1.68%) and HUBC (-1.50%) cumulatively contributed -232 points.

Sectors in general came down where Financials, Cements and Oil overwrought the market where major banks HBL (-0.89%), MCB (-3.86) and UBL (-0.04%) closed in the red. Among, Cement heavyweight, LUCK (-3.85%) was the major laggard that closed near to limit down.

Traded volumes slightly improved by 22 percent day-on-day (DoD) to 165 million shares while value traded increased to US$46 million. Top volume stocks were TRG (-2.40%) and UNITY (+1.20%).

Ladhani expects investor’s sentiment to remain choppy amid absence of any macroeconomic triggers. Therefore, the KSE-100 performance shall remain under pressure along with selling pressure from foreign investors.

Published in Daily Times, October 16^th 2018.