January, the first month of CY15, saw Pakistani equities outpacing their regional competitors with a heavy margin. According to an InvestCap report, during the month in review stocks outperformed the MSCI frontier market index by 9.9 percent with 5.8 percent earning returns against the index return of -4.1 percent. Also, Pakistan beat the MSCI emerging market and MSCI world indexes that generated a return of 0.6 percent and -1.9 percent in Jan'15, respectively.
Citing peer analysis, the report said, only India and Philippine performed better than Pakistan with a monthly return of 7.9 percent and seven percent MoM, respectively. However, it said, Indonesia remained the worst performing market of Asia pacific region with a negative return of 1.2 percent. Further, the average return of the region stood at 3.4 percent in Jan'15.
About KSE 100-index, the report said the index added 7.2 percent or 2,313 points in Jan'15 to close at 34,443pts during December. This, it said, was mainly on account of investors' anticipation for a significant cut (100 basis points) in the State Bank's discount rate.
Further, the report said, average daily volume of all shares index scaled up by a mammoth 23 percent to 304 million shares from 248 million of Dec'14. "Foreign investors remained shaky after Peshawar attack in Dec'14 and as a result, FIPI inched up by meager $6.0 million in Jan'15," it added.