The Karachi share market witnessed dull trading activities during the outgoing week ended on June 22, 2012 due to prevailing political situation in the country. After moving both sides during the week, the benchmark KSE-100 index finally managed to close in positive column on the back of healthy recovery on last trading session.
The index closed at 13,730.82 points, with a modest gain of 65.02 points (0.48 percent) on week-on-week basis.
Trading activities remained extremely low as the average daily volumes at ready counter declined by 20 percent on week-on-week basis to 69.07 million shares as compared to previous week''s average of 86.41 million shares.
Total market capitalisation increased by Rs 14 billion to Rs 3.504 trillion. The foreign investors remained net sellers and withdrew $6.21 million from the local equity market.
The market opened on a positive note on Monday and the index increased by 88.33 points to close at 13,754.13 points with low volumes of 79.961 million shares.
However, the investors on Tuesday opted to offload their holdings due to their concerns over prevailing political situation in the country and the index declined by 71.14 points to close at 13,682.99 points with further low volumes of 75.992 million shares.
On Wednesday, the market witnessed mixed trend and after moving both sides the index closed at 13,667.18 points, down 15.81 points with extremely low volumes of 47.417 million shares.
Bearish trend continued on Thursday and the index lost another 66.58 points to close at 13,600.60 points with slightly improved volumes of 57.159 million shares.
On Friday, the investors'' interest on available attractive levels supported the index to register healthy recovery of 130.22 points. The index closed the week at 13,730.82 points with 84.863 million shares.
Furqan Ayub, an analyst at JS Global Capital said that vapid trend at the local bourse was evident throughout the week as Supreme Court''s decision to disqualify Yousuf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister exacerbated the political scenario in the country. Additional ambiguity for investors came as a result of the current US-PAK impasse. Nonetheless, some respite came on the last trading day of the week which allowed the benchmark KSE-100 index to gain 65 points on week-on-week basis.
Pakistan weight-age remained unchanged in MSCI FM as U.A.E and Qatar didn''t get an upgrade to Emerging Market status. Moreover, if Morocco is downgraded to a frontier market in the near future it may reduce Pakistan''s weight in the Index. However, currently Morocco has been placed in the list of countries that are ''Under Review'' for a potential downgrade.
An analyst at AKD Securities said that the investors opted to remain on the sidelines during the outgoing week due to prevailing uncertainty on the political front.
He said the market continued to perform in a lackluster mode due to a major change on the political landscape (Supreme court verdict against PM Gilani) and weak economic data (May''12 CA deficit up 50 percent on month-on-month basis) due to which turnover remained relatively thin at the KSE.
Furthermore, sharp fall in commodity prices, particularly oil coupled with the weak Pak Rupee/US $ parity added to the sell-off during the week.
Trading activity was dominated by JSCL (32.73 million shares), DGKC (22.41 million shares), EFOODS (18.12 million shares), FFBL (14.06 million shares) and ENGRO (13.92 million shares).
Within the AKD Coverage Cluster, top gainers were SNGP (+6.84 percent on expectations of UFG relaxations), EFOODS (+4.46 percent) and PSMC (+3.87 percent), while AICL (-7 percent on expectations of limited portfolio gains), INDU(-6.99 percent) and PTC (-5.39 percent due to delay in rationalisation of ICH structure ) were the prominent laggards on week-on-week basis.