KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange started new week on negative note after shedding 123 points to reach 40125 level in early trading on Monday.
Last week, the political unrest continued to shake market participants with KSE-100 index closing down 1.5 percent WoW. The government’s decision to shut furnace oil (FO) based power plants also affected performance of OMCs (down 4.1 percent WoW) and refineries (-2.7 percent WoW) sectors, wiping out 218 points from the index.
As a result, across the board pressure was seen in other sectors as well such as; Fertilisers (down 1.3 percent WoW) and Cements (down 1.5 percent WoW). As a result of overall uncertain market outlook, Mutual Funds and Foreign Investors continued to offload positions with net selling of $3.5 million and $6.2 million worth of equities, respectively. Some improvement in activity was seen with overall average volumes traded increasing by 5.8 percent WoW to 112 million shares but majorly remained concentrated in low-mid market cap stocks (like K-Electric) due to which average traded value declined by 7.9 percent WoW.
During the last week, KSE100 Index lost 596 points to close at 40,248 points, amid lack of triggers and continued political uncertainty. Most of the major sectors such as commercial banks (-1.5 percent WoW), cements (-1.4 percent WoW), chemicals (-0.9 percent WoW), oil & gas (-0.8 percent WoW) and food producers (-8.2 percent WoW) ended the week in the red zone, whereas electricity (+1.9 percent WoW), electrical and electronic goods (+8.9 percent WoW) and illiquid tobacco (+11.9 percent WoW) gained during the week. Foreign investors remained net sellers during the week offloading $6.3 million worth of scrips. Most of this selling was concentrated in cements ($3.7m) and commercial banks (4.3m). This was offset to some extent by buying in oil & gas (5.1m).
