Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan equities finished Friday higher after seeing volatile trading and dull volumes amid heightened political noise.

Market opened on a negative note continued its previous day trend with extremely low volumes in the first half of the trading session. However, in the second half, market showed speedy recovery making an intra-day high of +322 points to finally close at 45,294 level, 234 points above the previous day close.

Stocks had a weak start in the morning with uncertainty on domestic politics mainly contributing to lackluster volumes. The benchmark KSE100 Index initially traded in narrow range and afterwards witnessed sharp swings on both sides in a 500-points range with investors reacting negatively to news of arrest of Chairman Securities and Exchange Commission (SECP) on record tempering in Panama case as after morning session nears close.

Key news of Supreme Court completing hearing on case against Prime Minister and his family and reserving verdict for a later date also made headlines during the mid-session break and fueled anxiety among participants. Contrary to expectations of sharp losses in PM session by many, wider market managed to end on a modest note albeit witnessing wild swings as KSE1-00 Index settled over 45,200 level, up 0.5 percent.

Oils, financials and select industrials mainly contributed to day’s gains while cements witnessed profit-taking and closed lower. An analyst at Elixir Research expects monetary policy decision over the weekend to likely be a non-event for market next week as most expect no change in discount rate. Flows are expected to mainly guide the market direction while newsflow on domestic politics will continue to keep investors on the lookout.

JS Research’s analyst Maaz Mulla said positivity in the market came as Supreme Court concluded the hearing of the Panamagate case and reserved its judgment for the same.

Volumes also recovered in the second half and totaled at 122 million for the day, as buying spree begun in the market. TRG gaining 4.77 percent from the tech sector led the volume for the third consecutive day with 12.5 million shares traded in total. Moreover news of Rs185 billion loans to be paid off to DISCOs did not bring much impact to the power sector as scrips in the aforementioned sector witnessed a mixed trend in Friday’s trading session. “We recommend a cautious approach in the market at current levels due to the rollover week in the next week and volatility from the pending decision on the political issue”, said Mulla.

Published in Daily Times, July 22^nd , 2017.