KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange witnessed bullish trend during the outgoing week ended on April 01, 2022 on the back of aggressive buying mainly by local investors coupled with institutional support.
The benchmark KSE-100 index surged by 1,600.96 points on week-on-week basis and crossed 45,000 psychological-level to close at 45,152.11 points. Trading activities also improved significantly as average daily volumes on ready counter increased by 115.7 percent to 310.09 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 143.74 million shares while average daily traded value on ready counter increased by 73.1 percent to Rs 8.10 billion.
BRIndex100 added 194.89 points during this week to close at 4,547.58 points with average daily turnover of 267.144 million shares.
BRIndex30 increased by 1,021.44 points on week-on-week basis to close at 16,420.85 points with average daily trading volumes of 193.223 million shares.
The foreign investors remained on the selling side with net outflows of $15.5 million during this week with the most being in banks ($13.7 million), along with mutual funds (net sell: $5.2 million) which was absorbed by banks (net buy: $15.7 million) and Individuals (net buy: $7.5 million). Total market capitalization increased by Rs 241 billion during this week to Rs 7.599 trillion.
An analyst at AKD Securities said that momentum gained in the previous week continued into this week with the index gaining 3.7 percent on week-on-week basis – the strongest weekly return since April 2020 – to close at 45,152 points.
Participation also improved during the week, with average volumes at 310.1 million shares – the highest in 11 weeks, with side scrips garnering investor attention (KSE-100/KSE-all ready volumes average at 37.7 percent versus 42.8 percent in the previous week.
“We believe attractive entry points with end of political debacle insight and potential normalization in global commodity prices (TRJ commodities index down 4.0 percent on WoW) precipitated investor action”, the analyst said.
Sector wise, amongst major sectors Engineering topped with a gain of 9.6 percent, followed by Techs (up 5.8 percent) while E&Ps stood largely unchanged (up 1.0 percent) whereas across all sectors vanaspati and allied industries and refineries gained 6.8 percent and 6.2 percent respectively – the most after Engineering sector.
Top performing stocks for the week were ANL (up 16.3 percent), IGIHL (up 15.1 percent), DGKC (up 14.7 percent), NRL (up 11.7 percent) and PIOC (up 11.1 percent), while laggards were COLG (down 3.9 percent), SRVI (down 3.9 percent), ATLH (down 1.8 percent), ABL (down 1.4 percent) and EFERT (down 0.5 percent).
An analyst at JS Global Capital said that the PSX continued on the recovery trend this week as well. The week started on a positive note in response to a significant drop in commodity prices.
Notable activity was observed in the cement sector due to lower coal prices whereas engineering sector also remained in the limelight due to price hike announced by rebar manufacturers.
Investor confidence improved during the week which was evident from increase in volumes which rose 116 percent on WoW.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022