Daily Times

Pakistan equities turned lower on Tuesday amid low volumes, closing down 448 points at 38,852.

Day started on a bearish note as Investors opted to book profits after a steep rise on Monday as market remained negative throughout the trading sessions after brief positivity in the early hours.

Ismail Iqbal Securities’ analyst attributed the bearish sentiment to declining remittances in November 2018 (-19.6% MoM) and newsflow on delay in launch of USD 3 billion Eurobond. NAB’s decision to arrest Khawaja brothers on Paragon Housing scam case further intensified the bearish sentiment.

Overall activity remained lackluster with only 84 million shares exchanging hands in KSE-100 Index, however cement and steels to the likes of Lucky Cement and DG Khan Cement found some traction in mid-day and recovered from day’s lows after the news of lifting of ban on construction of high rise building in Sindh – meanwhile Amreli Steels limited gaining 2.73 percent shot up to its upper price limit before succumbing to profit taking.

“We expect the market to find support at 38,800/600 levels”, said Muratza Jafar, an analyst at Elixir Research.

Energy and Financials were the major laggards in today’s trading where PPL (-1.4%), OGDC (-1.2%) & HBL (-2.2%) and MCB (-0.9%) closed negative. Major stocks OGDC (-1.2%), HBL (-2.2%), FFC (+0.9%), PPL (-1.4%), HUBC (-2.2%), UBL (-1.0%), ENGRO (-1.4%) and POL (-1.5%) cumulatively contributed -178 points towards the close.

Average daily traded value stood at US$42 million, down 12 percent and volume stood at 124 million shares, down 20 percent. Furthermore, major contribution to total market volume came from PAEL (-0.2%), ASTL (+2.7%) and KEL (-0.8%). An equity analyst Danish Ladhani expects market to remain sideways on the back of economic and political uncertainty.

Published in Daily Times, December 12^th 2018.