KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under pressure during the outgoing week ended on December 16, 2022 due to selling on investor concerns over prevailing economic and political situation in the country.
The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 396.80 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 41,301.48 points.
Trading activities also remained low as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 9.9 percent to 161.96 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 179.73 million shares however average daily traded value on ready counter increased by 9.8 percent to Rs 4.5 billion against previous week’s Rs 4.13 billion.
BRIndex100 lost 54.03 points during this week to close at 4,109.88 points with average daily turnover of 128.841 million shares.
BRIndex30 plunged by 499.22 points on week-on-week basis to close at 14,848.01 points with average daily trading volumes of 66.524 million shares.
Total market capitalization declined by Rs 76 billion during this week to Rs 6.564 trillion. “In a week which saw range-bound movement for the index, the highlight of the week was Thursday when the market took a hit, culminating to the KSE-100 losing 1.0 percent on WoW to close at 41,301points”, an analyst at AKD Securities said.
Economic uncertainty caused by enhanced delays in the 9th Review in the program with the IMF, which along with rising interest rates have led to a lacklustre sentiment in the market. Further exasperating the sentiment is the critical level of the country’s FX reserves, having dropped to $12.6billion.
Sector-wise, the top performing sectors were miscellaneous (up 11.2 percent), Tobacco (up 5.5 percent), REIT (up 3.6 percent), Textile Composite (up 2.7 percent), and vanaspati & Allied (up 1.7 percent), while the least favourite sectors were leasing companies (down 8.0 percent), automobile parts (down 7.6 percent), close-end mutual funds (down 6.1 percent), refineries (down 4.5 percent), and Jute (down 4.1 percent).
Stock-wise, top performers were PSEL (up 28.6 percent), PAKT (up 6.5 percent), SYS (up 6.1 percent), Engro (up 5.2 percent), and DCR (up 3.6 percent), while laggards were PGCL (down 16.0 percent), LOTCHEM (down 15.9 percent), TGL (down 13.0 percent), THALL (down 10.2 percent), and MTL (down 9.4 percent).
Flow-wise, Foreigners topped the net sellers, offloading $9.6million followed by Mutual Funds ($7.1million), Individuals ($2.5 million), insurance companies ($1.4million) and NBFC ($0.1million). While banks, companies, Other organisations and brokers were on the buying side, with a net buy of $12.8 million, $6.2 million, $1.5 million, and $0.2 million respectively.
An analyst at JS Global Capital said that the KSE-100 witnessed a downward trend during the week due to lack of political and economic stability closing in at 41,301 points, down 1.0 percent on WoW. Sector wise, refinery (down 4.5 percent), chemicals (down 4.0 percent), OMCs (down 2.9 percent) and banks (down 1.8 percent) remained key underperformers whereas textiles (up 2.7 percent) and fertilizer (up 1.6 percent) were key out performers.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022