KSE-100 index turned bearish during the April 2018 as it registered a loss of 71 points or 0.16 percent Month on Month basis (MoM) and finally closed at the 45,489 points index level. According to a report issued by Spectrum Securities Limited, during the month, stock market remained under pressure due to hype regarding the announcement of budget FY19, political uncertainty due to ongoing cases in Supreme Court and below expected quarterly results.
During the month, banking sector dragged down the index by 403 points as financial results of 1QFY18 were depressed mainly due to adjustment of unusual pension expense. Further, the FBR is considering withdrawing incentive of loss provisioning allowed on foreign branches advances.
Similarly, cement sector also brought down the index by 220 points due to Supreme Court decision regarding Katas temple case and expectation regarding increase in FED rate in FY19 budget, the report said.
On the other hand, fertilizer sector pushed up the index by 202 points, due to increase in urea sales and expectations of favourable budget proposal to reduce sales tax on all fertilizers. Furthermore, oil & gas marketing companies also pushed up the index by 139 points given the increase in international crude oil prices from USD 63.01/barrel to 67.37/barrel.
According to report average volume during the month increased by 9 percent MoM to 209 million shares, wherein EPCL, LOTCHEM, KEL were the major volume leaders, while total capitalization of all shares index increased by 0.2%MoM to USD81.964bn, mainly due to increase in capitalization of Tobacco (14.7%MoM), OMC (4.4%MoM) and textile (3.1%MoM).
In April-18, foreigner turned net-seller with amount of USD17.4 million. Wherein major selling was witnessed in Oil and gas exploration (USD31.8 million), OMCs (USD6.8 million) and Textile (USD2 million).
On the local front, buying was reported by Mutual funds (USD72.9 million), Individuals (USD16.4 million) and other organization (USD6.5 million) while Banks and Companies offloaded USD34.9 million and USD25.8 million respectively.