KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under pressure during the outgoing week ended on August 26, 2022 due to increased political noise and devaluation of Pak Rupee against US$.
The benchmark KSE-100 index plunged by 679.14 points on week-on-week basis and closed below 43,000 psychological-level at 42,591.51 points. Trading activities also remained thin as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 51.9 percent during this week to 249.89 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 519.00 million shares while average daily traded value on ready counter declined by 33.6 percent to Rs 8.11 billion against previous week’s average of Rs 12.21 billion.
BRIndex100 decreased by 69.91 points during this week to close at 4,266.34 points with average daily turnover of 204.352 million shares.
BRIndex30 declined by 458.30 points on week-on-week basis to close at 15,529.80 points with average daily trading volumes of 131.876 million shares.
Total market capitalization declined by Rs 91 billion during this week to Rs 7.110 trillion.
“The market remained jittery during the week, clouded by political uncertainty after a case was registered against ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Anti-Terrorism Court, which shadowed positive news regarding foreign inflows and SBP keeping interests rates unchanged”, an analyst at AKD Securities said.
The PKR lost value against the USD, with the currency depreciating 2.72 percent against the greenback over the week, to close at PkR220.66/US$.
Sector-wise, the top performing sectors were woolen (up 10 percent), and Glass and Ceramics (up 2.2 percent), while the least favourite sectors were Miscellaneous (down 8 percent) and Vanaspati and Allied Industries (down 8 percent).
Stock-wise, top performers were TGL (up 11.0 percent), BNWM (up 9.8 percent), FATIMA (up 5.8 percent), LUCK (up 5.3 percent) and SCBPL (up 4.7 percent), while laggards were PSEL (down 18.8 percent), POML (down 18.1 percent), KTML (down 8.3 percent), PSO (down 7.8 percent) and AICL (down 6.7 percent).
Flow wise, banks/ DFIs remained the major buyers with (net buy of $4.1million) followed by Individuals (net buy of $3.8 million) while insurance companies stood on the other side with (net sell of $5.1 million) followed by mutual funds (net sell of $3.8 million).
An analyst at JS Global Capital said that increased political noise and devaluation of Pak Rupee against US$ (down 3 percent on WoW) led to profit taking this week.
The week started with political noise over the possibility of former prime minister’s arrest in the foreign funding case.
Key underperformers were OMCs (down 4 percent), Refinery (down 3 percent) and Engineering (down 3 percent) while Cement (up 0.4 percent) and Fertilizer (up 0.2 percent) outperformed the benchmark.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022