KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange remained under pressure during the outgoing week ended on March 11, 2022 due to prevailing political situation in the country and overheated commodities cycle.
The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 898.02 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 43,653.33 points. Trading activities remained low as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 0.7 percent to 213.58 million shares as compared to previous week’s average of 215.19 million shares while average daily traded value on the ready counter declined by 10.0 percent to Rs 6.83 billion against previous week’s average of Rs 7.59 billion.
BRIndex100 decreased by 163.01 points during this week to close at 4,351.87 points with average daily turnover of 176.237 million shares.
BRIndex30 plunged by 974.15 points on week-on-week basis to close at 15,607.74 with average daily trading volumes of 121.880 million shares.
Mutual funds remained as the net sellers, offloading $7.1 million followed by Foreigners ($3.1 million), Insurance Companies ($0.6 million) and Brokers ($0.3 million). While banks, companies, individuals and other organizations were on the buying side, with a net buy of $1.5 million, $5.5 million, $0.4 million and $3.7 million respectively. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 209 billion during this week to settle at Rs 7.450 trillion.
“In the outgoing week, we saw global commodity prices reach unparalleled highs, affecting the market adversely with KSE-100 losing 2.0 percent on week-on-week basis to close at 43,653 points”, an analyst at AKD Securities said.
Local political uncertainty along with central bank’s hint of potential further tightening (as a result of commodities super cycle) also negatively contributed to market sentiments, he added.
Sector-wise, the gains remained small, with the top performing sectors being REITs (up 0.9 percent), Close-end Mutual funds (up 0.5 percent) and Technology & Communications (up 0.5 percent), while the least favourite sectors were refinery (down 8.2 percent), oil & gas marketing companies (down 6.5 percent), engineering (down 6.1 percent), modarabas (down 5.6 percent) and vanaspati & allied industries (down 5.0 percent).
Stock-wise, top performers were SYS (up 11.4 percent), NATF (up 9.5 percent), SHFA (up 6.1 percent), THALL (up 5.1 percent) and MLCF (up 4.7 percent), while laggards were MTL (down 19.6 percent), HMM (down 16.6 percent), KTML (down 13.3 percent), UNITY (down 11.9 percent) and NRL (down 11.6 percent.
An analyst at JS Global Capital said that the week started with investors succumbing to panic from oil prices reaching GFC highs amid talks of Russian embargo and uncertainty looming across markets owing to Russia-Ukraine tensions, with market losing 2.9 percent in a single day. However, the nose-dive did not last long after the index recovered 1.9 percent mid-week as oil prices could not sustain the momentum and SBP decided to keep rates unchanged.
The index declined 2.0 percent on WoW to 43,653 points where the biggest losers were the refineries (down 8.2 percent) and OMCs (down 6.5 percent). In contrast to high oil prices, E&Ps also lost 4.7 percent. Also, Auto sector took a beating owing to devaluation of Rs/US$.
Net foreign selling rose to $3.1 million from $0.1 million last week where major selling was witnessed in banks ($4.5 million) and Textiles ($0.4 million).
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022