Daily Times

Pakistan Stock exchange (PSX) witnessed panic selling on the last trading session of the week, after the previous session’s modest recovery, owing to MSCI downgrade fears and roll-over adjustments.

On Friday, the index began the session on a positive note after the opening bell and crossed the 48,000-point mark, as Investors went on a value-hunting spree, and continued to cherry pick oversold stocks at attractive prices- touching an intraday high of 48,040.10 level.

However, failing to sustain the momentum the index reversed its trajectory and lost as much as 486 points to touch an intra day low of 47,476.38 level.

The selling pressure at the index was primarily triggered by huge open positions of future contracts on the last trading day of the roll-over week, which were to be settled or rolled over.

Moreover, adding the weight of panic on selling pressure, the market sentiments were also dented by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) proposal to downgrade the PSX to its Frontier Markets (FM) Index in November 2021 from the Emerging Markets (EM) Index at present.

Speculations and uncertainty over the upcoming Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report, which was scheduled to be released later in the day, also played on investors’ minds as the ongoing FATF plenary at Paris will review Pakistan’s progress made to curb AML/CFT activities and decide whether the country remains on the ‘grey list’ or not.The FATF decision was announced after the market closed. It said that Pakistan will continue to be on the increased monitoring list, also called the ‘grey list.’

The index, however, witnessed some late hour recovery following remarks of Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin during the concluding session of budget debate in the lower house of parliament.The minister termed the Finance Bill 2021 the “budget of hope” for the underprivileged, and announced few incentives for different sectors.

The volume at kse-100 jumped from 150 million shares recorded in the previous session to around 262.5 million shares, while the volume at all shares index surged from 638 million shares to 761 million shares.

At kse-100 the volume chart was led by WorldCall Telecom Limited, followed by Byco petroleum Limited and Pace (Pakistan) Limited. The scrips exchanged 142.8 million, 53.8 million and 45.16 million shares.

As per the National Clearing Company of Pakistan limited (NCCPL) foreign investors were net sellers of worth $5.9 million worth of shares.

Among local Individuals Insurance Companies and Mutual Funds led the selling chart, which offloaded $4.5million, $4.49 million worth of equities.

However, Individuals, Companies, Banks and Brokers led the buying chart and mopped up about $6.4 million, $4.9 million, $4.2 million and $2.19 million worth of equities.

During the session, sectors which dented the index were banks with 114 points, cement with 101 points, exploration and production with 63 points, pharmaceuticals with 40 points and investment banks with 28 points.

Among the scrips, the most points taken off the index were Lucky Cement with 66 points, HBL with 50 points, UBL with 36 points, Pakistan Petroleum with 20 points and Dawood Hercules with 19 points.

However, the scrips, which lifted the index were Pakistan Services Limited with 29 points, FrieslandCampina Pakistan with 14 points, Systems Limited with 12 points, Azgard Nine with 7 points and Hubco with 7 points.