KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under selling pressure during the outgoing week ended on February 02, 204 with low trading activities as the investors remained cautious and avoided to take fresh position on their concerns over political noise in the country. The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 810.14 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 63,002.92 points.

Trading activities remained low as average daily volumes on ready counter declined by 24.7 percent to 312.85 million shares during this week as compared to previous week’s average of 415.58 million shares while average daily traded value on the ready counter declined by 43.2 percent to Rs 11.52 billion during this week against previous week’s Rs 20.29 billion.

BRIndex100 lost 93.59 points during this week to close at 6,455.43 points with average daily turnover of 269.048 million shares.

BRIndex30 decreased by 383.59 points on week-on-week basis to close at 22,756.92 points with average daily trading volumes of 215.696 million shares.

The foreign investors also remained net sellers and withdrew $9.705 million from the local equity market during this week. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 153 billion during this week to stand at Rs 9.206 trillion.

An analyst at AKD Securities said that the KSE-100 index had a somewhat subdued week in terms of overall trading volumes, with momentum largely driven by news-based events, particularly in the energy sector. Further, decision surrounding the MPC meeting on Monday, coupled with expectations of CPI for January 2024 kept participants in a state of suspense throughout the week.

Sector-wise, Exchange Traded Funds and Transport were amongst the top performers, up 5.7 percent and 3.2 percent respectively. On the other hand, Automobile Parts & Accessories, Chemical and OMC were amongst the worst performers with decline of 7.4 percent/6.9 percent/5.0 percent, respectively.

Flow wise, major net selling was recorded by Foreigner (net sell: $9.7 million). On the other hand, Insurance Companies absorbed most of the selling with a net buy of $7.0 million.

Company-wise, top performers during the week were MTL (up 5.7 percent), OGDC (up 4.4 percent), UNITY (up 3.6 percent), MCB (up 3.5 percent) and AKBL (up 2.7 percent), while top laggards were YOUW (down 12.2 percent), PTC (down 12.1 percent), COLG (down 91 percent), KEL (down 9.1 percent) and PGLC (down 8.3 percent).

An analyst at JS Global Capital said that the KSE-100 index had a bumpy ride this week, reporting a decline of 810 points or 1.3 percent on WoW basis.

Domestic politics continued to drive market sentiments where the investors largely ignored corporate announcements during the last week before General Elections.

Despite law and order issues in some constituencies, ECP and the caretaker government remained committed to conduct elections on time.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024