Foreign investors opted to offload their holdings and withdrew $331.939 million from Pakistan stock market during the first half of 2017 as compared to an outflow of $41 million in the same period in 2016. However, the foreigners emerged net buyers of shares during the last week of the half year and bought equities worth $34.121 million.
Pakistan stock market remained under pressure as the benchmark KSE-100 index declined 3 percent during the first half of 2017 to 46,565 points. Bulk of the sell-off was seen in June 2017 (worst June since 1999 and worst month since March 2015), with the index crashing 8 percent due to a plethora of negative news and events that missed expectations, an analyst at Topline Securities said. In FY17, the index rose 23 percent against 10 percent in FY16.
Average daily volumes on the ready market stood at 315 million shares, up 72 percent compared to 182 million shares last year. The traded value was up 81 percent to Rs 16.3 billion/$155 million, compared to Rs 9.0 billion/$87 million. Surge in traded value was due to increased activity in blue chips, amplified by the MSCI upgrade.
Mutual Funds provided major liquidity buying up equities worth $268 million, while insurance companies also supported with inflows of $128 million. Individuals and Banks remained sellers, offloading $77 million and $73 million, respectively.