Total investment under the continuous funding system (CFS) at the local share market, touched its all time high level of Rs 54.7 billion on Thursday. It, however, finally settled at Rs 54.64 billion on the weekend (Friday) as compared to Rs 54.38 billion on the same day previous week.
The CFS rates slipped by 11 basis points from 11.86 percent on April 20 to 11.75 percent on April 27.
An analyst at Invest Capital Securities said that the CFS rates are not expected to rise significantly in the coming week, should the liquidity prevails in the money market. Of the total CFS investment, about 50 percent (Rs 27 billion) is concentrated in the five stocks namely PPL, POL, OGDC, NBP, and DGKC.
The current week being the rollover week, has an impact on the futures market as the current week open interest (May futures) on April 27 closed at Rs 7.2 billion as compared to last week (April 20) closing of Rs 9.5 billion. Futures spreads (May) stood at 5.18 percent (April 27) as compared to last week (April 20) closing of 1.21 percent.
Average futures volumes rose by 10 percent from 71 million last week to 76 million as the investors took more positions in futures due to funding constraints in the ready market. The top five companies (NBP, OGDC, POL, PPL and MCB) in terms of investment contributed around 55 percent to the total open interest. NBP-May led the futures market with the value of open interest at higher than Rs 1 billion.
An analyst at the JS Research, said at the weekend Rs 4.8 billion remained unsettled in the April contract. Out of Rs 9.5 billion open interest on last Friday, Rs 4.7 billion or 49 percent of April contract was transferred to May futures.