KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under pressure during the outgoing four-day week ended on August 16, 2024 due to selling as the investors opted to offload their holdings on available margins.
The benchmark KSE-100 index plunged by 524.28 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 78,045.31 points.
Trading activities slightly improved as average daily volumes on ready counter increased by 12.2 percent to 552.77 million shares during this week as compared to previous week’s average of 492.62 million shares while average daily traded value on the ready counter increased by 1.1 percent to Rs 20.85 billion during this week against previous week’s Rs 20.63 billion.
BRIndex100 decreased by 114.35 points during this week to close at 8,186.56 points with average daily turnover of 428.285 million shares.
BRIndex30 declined by 366.85 points on week-on-week basis to close at 25,631.60 points with average daily trading volumes of 254.705 million shares.
The foreign investors however remained net buyers of shares worth $5.260 million. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 93 billion during this week to stand at Rs 10.398 trillion.
An analyst at JS Global Capital said that the KSE-100 index remained largely range-bound throughout the week, ending with modest WoW losses of 0.7 percent, closing at 78,045 points.
The market experienced some recovery towards the end of the week, fuelled by expectations of single-digit inflation – a milestone not seen in the past three years –which could lead to a potential policy rate cut in the upcoming monetary policy meeting in September 2024.
In MSCI’s quarterly review, SAZEW was moved from the MSCI Small Cap Index to the MSCI Frontier Markets Index, while six stocks were added to the Small Cap Index and two were removed.
“During the 4-day week, overall the market remained range-bound”, an analyst at Arif Habib Limited said.
The week started on a positive note as on Monday in the MSCI review Pakistan’s weight in the FM space increased to 3.9 percent. Additionally, the Government of Pakistan raised Rs 119 billion against a target of Rs 100 billion through Ijarah Sukuk.
Sector-wise positive contributions came from E&P (up 267 points), leather & tanners (up 42 points), fertilizers (up 23 points), Inv. banking (up 8 points) and sugar (up 6 points). Meanwhile, the sectors that mainly contributed negatively were cements (down 354 points), banks (down 210 points), power (down 95points), auto assembler (down 54 points) and auto parts (down 43 points).
Scrip-wise positive contributors were MARI (up 249 points), MCB (up 147 points), POL (up 75 points), FFC (up 71 points) and JVDC (up 46 points). Meanwhile, scrip-wise negative contributions came from MEBL (down 161 points), LUCK (down 134 points), BAHL (down 99 points), OGDC (down 56 points) and MTL (down 55 points).
Foreigner buying was observed during this week, clocking in at $5.26 million (4-days) compared to a net buy of $1.41 million last week. Major buying was witnessed in FMCG ($3.39 million) and Banks ($0.8 million). On the local front, selling was reported by Companies ($4.4 million) followed by banks /DFIs ($3.2 million).
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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