KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange witnessed recovery trend during the outgoing week ended on March 04, 2022 on the back of fresh buying mainly in E&P.
Major support came from the E&P Sector due to increasing oil prices in the international market after Ukraine-Russia conflict. The crude oil prices in the international market surged to $114 per barrel. The investor interest was also seen in fertilizer, insurance, it and refineries sectors. The market also responded favourably to the relief package announced by the Prime Minister.
The benchmark KSE-100 index increased by 567.11 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 44,551.35 points. Trading activities however remained low as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 5.9 percent to 215.19 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 228.58 million shares. Average daily traded value on the ready counter increased by 13.2 percent and stood at Rs 7.59 billion during this week. Total market capitalization increased by Rs 122 billion to Rs 7.659 trillion.
BRIndex100 gained 80.37 points during this week to close at 4,514.88 points with average daily turnover of 182.481 million shares.
BRIndex30 surged by 616.82 points on week-on-week basis to close at 16,581.89 points with average daily trading volumes of 117.417 million shares.
“Another week dominated by Russia-Ukraine conflict, which saw global commodities touching a new high during the week”, an analyst at AKD Securities said.
The fear of raging commodities fuelling yet another wave of inflationary pressures triggered government of Pakistan in action which announced a benevolent economic package designed to alleviate inflationary pressures from the masses. To this end, the government decided to slash the administered fuel prices by Rs 10/ltr for petrol, thereby taking a hit on its PDL tax collection to provide respite to the masses. Also, the electricity prices were reduced by Rs 5/unit where the monthly fuel adjustments were not passed on.
The market responded favourably to these short term respites provided by the government and the index gained 1.3 percent on week-on-week basis to close at 44,551 points level.
The top performing sectors included Oil and Gas Exploration (up 8.4 percent), Insurance (up 3.8 percent), IT (up 3.5 percent), Refineries (up 3.2 percent) and Fertilizers (up 3.2 percent) while the least favourite sectors during the week were Leasing Companies (down 12.9 percent), Close end MFs (down 10.7 percent), Vanaspati and Allied (down 3.2 percent), textile composites (down 1.9 percent) and cements (down 1.6 percent).
Stock wise, top performers were PPL (up 13.6 percent), TRG (up 12.7 percent), Fatima (up 12.3 percent), HMM (up 10.3 percent) and OGDC (up 10.1 percent), while laggards were SML (down 10.4 percent), HGFA (down 7.6 percent), NCL (down 5.0 percent), DGKC (down 4.5 percent) and MUREB (down 4.3 percent.
An analyst at JS Global Capital said after posting a sharp decline last week owing to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the market exhibited a recovery trend throughout the week amid PM’s relief package announcement increasing from 43,984 points to 44,803 points before closing at 44,551 points, up by 1.3 percent on WoW).
E&P sector gained the most during the week increasing by 8.4 percent on WoW driven by the rally in crude oil prices peaking at $111/bbl. Among the underperformers were the textile sector and cement sector.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022