Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan equities on Monday closed deep in red, ahead of Maryam Nawaz’s appearance before JIT, with benchmark KSE100 Index losing record 1900 points, on the first day of the new fiscal year, and settling down 4.1%, at its lowest since August 2015, at 44665.41 level.

Domestic politics as key members of Premier’s family had been lined up to appear before investigative panel in corruption probe this week is to blame where what started as a knee-jerk reaction to political noise recently turned into full-blown hammering, analysts at Elixir Securities said.

Meanwhile, lower-than-consensus inflation reading announced for the month of June also failed to bring any excitement in the market. All hundred companies represented in benchmark KSE100 Index closed either in red or flat with more than half (56) of them closing at their respective lower price limits or falling by more than 4%.

Monday’s performance was underpinned by across the board selling while institutions failed to provide support. It is likely that those currently in the market are trimming positions while those with liquidity likely believe that risk is too high for deployment, commented analysts at Topline Securities.

Index heavy Habib Bank HBL PA -5% led declines, followed by United Bank Limited, Lucky Cements, Oil & Gas Dev and MCB Bank.

Top 10 Index point decliners were HBL (-5%), UBL (-5%), LUCK (-5%), OGDC (-5%), MCB (-5%), ENGRO (-4.1%), HUBC (-4.7%), DGKC (-4.8%), FFC (-4.1%) & PSO (-4.8%); bleeding 881 points. Bank shed 496 points, Cement 256 points, Fertilizer 232 points, E&P 189 points, OMC 138 points.

ITTEFAQ fell 4.8% on its first day of trading; while such a price move in this market wasn’t surprising, the volume (6.8 million shares or 17% of float) likely indicates that it IPO’ed at an unjustified premium. PSX slid 3.5% on its 3rd day of trade, its down 11% from IPO, according to Topline Securities.

Participants sat on the bench as volumes plummeted 34% to 157 million shares, while traded value declined 6% to Rs 8.8bn/ $84.3 million.

Shares of 359 companies were traded at the bourse out of which 21 gained closed in green, 326 declined and 12 remained unchanged.

On volume leaders chart the Engro Polymer topped with 10.5 million shares traded followed by Maple Leaf Cement 9.5 million, Bank of Punjab 8.4 million, Bank of Punjab 8.2 million, TRG Pak 8 million.

Market pundits expect stocks to remain under pressure in the near term with investors eagerly waiting for any clarity on domestic political front.

Published in Daily Times, July 4^th , 2017.