KARACHI – Till mid day trade on Monday, the benchmark KSE-100 Index advanced to 34575.35 By gaining 131.48 points or 0.38 percent as compared to 34,444 points at which the index had closed the week with 1.2 percent WoW hike.
It was because of further petrol price decrease and State Bank of Pakistan’s cut of 100bps in discount rate.
Experts say yields on fixed income govt papers have come off considerably on the back of interest rate expectations and liquidity. In the limelight given the cut in the discount rate, the highly leveraged cements (+4.5pc WoW) and EFERT (+7.2pc WoW) remained. Heavy-weight oil and gas sector (-2.8pc WoW) was a key laggard during the outgoing week due to below-than-expected earnings announcements.
The High and Low were 34724.42 and 34443.87 points with total trade volume of 112,802,890. However, average trading volumes last week decreased by 1.3pc WoW to 298m shares/day because of deteriorating law and order in the city, while net foreign buying clocked in at $3.3m agains last week’s net buying of $1.7m.
The experts added that banks have made record investment of PKR2.6tn in PIBs during CY14 against annual average of PKR129b since CY01. With yields coming down, valuations of listed companies will theoretically be revised upwards by 5-10pc. They expected more cash flows from institutions and high net worth individuals to come to equities if yields on PIBs remain low.
