KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed range bound trend during the outgoing week ended on December 10, due to investors’ lack of interest on their concerns over prevailing economic situation in the country.
The benchmark KSE-100 index, after moving in both directions closed at 43,395.78 points, up 162.95 points on week-on-week basis.
Trading activities remained thin as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 36.1 percent to 203.83 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 319.05 million shares. Average daily traded value on ready counter declined by 53.4 percent and stood at Rs 7.39 billion.
BRIndex100 gained 20.59 points on week-on-week basis to close at 4,418.96 points. Average daily trading volumes stood at 165.737 million shares.
BRIndex30 increased by 407.95 points on week-on-week basis to close at 17,387.35 points with average daily turnover of 102.577 million shares.
Flow-wise, foreigners stood at net sellers, drawing out $1.0 million along with Mutual Funds (net sell: $4.2 million) which was mainly absorbed by others ($3.9 million) and companies ($2.1 million). Total market capitalization increased by Rs 40 billion to Rs 7.454 trillion.
An analyst at AKD Securities said after taking a heavy beating during last week on the back of high trade deficit for November 2021, market took a breather on the first trading session of the week while in the second session, the news of assistance from Saudi Arabia being deposited into SBP’s account provided some relief and the market rallied 1.3 percent during the session.
However, towards later part of the week, market set its sight on the upcoming monetary policy meeting and remained under pressure on the expectations of an increase in interest rates while PKR also kept depreciating.
Among sectors, Oil and Gas Exploration remained among the top performers on the back of increasing oil after it was declared that COVID-19’s new variant, ‘Omicron,’ isn’t as contagious as it was initially assessed to be. Additionally, technology sector remained in the limelight with the sector almost immune to rupee depreciation and increase in interest rates. Cement and Engineering, on the other hand, remained among the worst performers with both the sectors being cyclical in nature and are expected to be adversely affected from increase in interest rates.
Stock wise, major performers were STJT (up 24.2 percent), TRG (up 23.9 percent), PPL (up 13.5 percent), HASCOL (up 10.2 percent), OGDC (up 8.1 percent) while laggards were ANL (down 15.9 percent), PIOC (down 10.3 percent), HMM (down 8.1 percent), CHCC (down 7.6 percent) and SHFA (down 7.4 percent).
An analyst at JS Global Capital said a range bound trend was witnessed this week, which closed barely up 163 points at 43,396 levels.
News of settlement of overdue receivables of Oil and Gas Exploration Companies through a potential structured dividend plan broke in the market which brought renewed interest in the sector due to which the E&P sector closed up 7.5 percent on week-on-week basis.
Nonetheless, concerns over macroeconomic indicators of the country, ongoing PKR depreciation against the greenback and anticipated hike in Policy Rate next week kept investors at bay in broadly all heavy weight sectors.
Commercial Banks (down 1.5 percent), Cements (down 2.0 percent), Engineering (down 2.8 percent) and Fertilizer (down 0.3 percent) were among the key underperformers this week.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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