Daily Times

Karachi: Pakistan equities ended on the worst trading week on a negative note with the KSE 100 losing 225 points and settling down at 48,555.30 level on Friday.

Trading resumed on an absolute negative note, with the benchmark index plunging more than 1,400 points within the first 40 minutes of activity to set the day’s low at 47,491 points. During the week, the index shed around 4000 points – Thursday being the worst trading session.

“The worst week for Pakistan equities since February 2009 came to an end as the benchmark KSE-100 Index shed over 4,000 pts, or 7.8pc, with today being the only day that saw late buying from value hunters,” revealed Ali Raza, analyst at Elixir Securities.

Friday’s session opened the gap down and witnessed extreme volatility followed by recovery that helped to pare most of the morning losses that had pulled the Index down around 2.6% intra-day. Reported panic selling in EM stocks from institutions contributed the most to declines as rumors did the rounds of local smart money selling to meet possible redemptions while lack of clarity on FII sells was also one of the primary concerns.

On the sector front, banks were the worst hit with their capitalization shrinking 10% WoW as HBL, UBL & MCB declined between 13-14%, eroding 1,154 points; followed by E&P’s (-9.4%) as OGDC (-11.4%) and PPL (-9.4%) took away 436 points. Cements contracted 8.7% as LUCK (-14%) & DGKC (-8%) dented 443 points, while Fertilizers fell 7% led by ENGRO (-12%) & DAWH (-7%) that held back 293 points.

Individuals (+$74.8 million) were the biggest buyers while foreigners were sellers of $149.5 million during the week against buying $6.5 million last week. Most of the selling was concentrated in Banks ($65.3 million), Cements ($48.9 million) and Fertilizer ($28 million), while foreigners bought $7.1 million of Power, Topline Securities reported.

Volumes reached 221 million shares by the end of the session, while trading value was down to Rs 15.7 billion. On Friday, the shares of 356 companies were traded at the bourse out of which 155 closed in green, 190 declined and 11 closed unchanged.

On the volume leaders’ chart, Power Cement – with 16 million shares traded – stood at the top, followed by Bank of Punjab with 12.5 million, K-Electric with 12 million, TRG Pak with 10.4 million, and Engro Polymer with 8.8 million shares traded. “We see foreign activity in the days ahead to guide the broader market direction where clarity on direction of foreign flows and announced implementation of leveraged product can help revive investors’ confidence”, Raza predicted.