KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under pressure during the outgoing week ended on Oct 16, due to selling in various sectors.

BRIndex100 lost 71.49 points on week-on-week basis to close at 4,164.52 points. Average daily volumes stood at 261.247 million shares.

BRIndex30 decreased by 412.81 points to close at 21,163.49 points with average daily turnover of 194.164 million shares.

KSE-100 index declined by 634.41 points or 1.6 percent on week-on-week basis and closed at 40,164.02 points.

Trading activities remained thin as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 29.0 percent to 295.92 million shares as compared to previous week's average of 416.73 million shares. Average daily trading value declined by 24.4 percent to Rs 10.01 billion.

The foreign investors remained on the selling side and withdrew $2.677 million from Pakistan equity market during this week. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 114 billion or 1.5 percent to Rs 7.488 trillion.

An analyst at AKD Securities said that the KSE-100 began the week with positive sentiment buoyed by a pickup in worker's remittances and encouraging statements by government officials with regards to Pakistan's progress on FATF front (meetings lined in third week of October 2020).

However, with Asia Pacific Group (APG) of the FATF keeping Pakistan on its enhanced follow-up list (review based as of February 2020) dragged the market performance into red in its first session.

A disappointing result from HASCOL (one of the market's consistent volume leading scrips) middle of the week, coupled with political noise of upcoming jalsas by opposition parties commencing 16th October 2020 kept the investors at bay. Financial results of EPCL and HBL beat consensus earnings' expectation on the upside during 4th and 5th session, respectively.

Despite that, the market closed the index at 40,164 points, down 1.55 percent on week-on-week basis.

Top performers in the outgoing week were YOUW (up 24.9 percent), ANL (up 16.6 percent), FFBL (up 15.3 percent), SCBPL (up 8.9 percent) and FATIMA (up 7.1 percent), whereas laggards were SNGP (down 7.3 percent), HASCOL (down 7.6 percent), ATRL (down 7.8 percent), ILP (down 11.7 percent) and HMM (down 12.2 percent).

An analyst at JS Global Capital said that political noise and uptick in COVID-19 cases in the country wiped off most of last week's gains made at the local bourse this week as the KSE-100 index declined by 1.6 percent on WoW to close at 40,164 levels.

Among the heavy-weight sectors that led to the decline were Oil and Gas Exploration Companies (down 4.5 percent) and Cements (down 2.9 percent).

Investor participation simultaneously declined as averaged traded value declined to $61 million, down 24 percent on WoW; while average daily traded volumes declined by 29 percent on WoW to 296 million shares.

However, the Banks/DFIs segment remained major net buyers during the week with net buying accumulating to $7.6 million.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020