KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange dropped all the early gains and became flat till midday as the benchmark 100-index shed 6 points to reach 42744 points level on Monday.
Earlier, the stocks started new week on positive note and crossed the psychological barrier of 43,000 points after adding 303.62 points to reach 43053.82 points level in early trading.
Last week, the positive momentum helped the market record gains during the first three trading days aided by news of US and Pakistan agreeing to resume bilateral talks.
However, the bourse failed to sustain the rally as profit-taking was witnessed on Thursday over news that the Lahore High Court has ordered the Punjab government to make the Model Town incident report public. There were also media reports circulating during the week that the finance minister has decided to step down from his position. This all coincided with strong technical resistance of the benchmark KSE-100 index at around 43,500, with the index finally closing at 42,750 points (down 0.1 percent WoW).
Key sectors that outperformed were refineries (+4 percent WoW) and fertilizers (+3 percent WoW), whereas sectors that underperformed were cements (-3 percent WoW) and oil & gas exploration (-1 percent WoW). The overall activity at the bourse improved as the average daily volumes and traded value picked up to reasonable levels of 171m shares/day (+9 percent WoW) and $85m/day (+3 percent WoW), respectively. Key buyers were banks/DFIs with net buying of $2.6m, while foreigners were also net buyers of $0.4m during the week.
Top KSE-100 index point contributions came from DAWH (+9 percent WoW), MCB (+4 percent), FFC (+6 percent), NESTLE (+4 percent) & UBL (+4 percent) which added 298pts; while HBL (-5 percent), LUCK (-4 percent), MEBL (-8 percent), SNGP (-5 percent), & OGDC (-2 percent) withheld 337pts.
On the sector front, refinery was up 4 percent WoW led by NRL (+5 percent) & ATRL (+6 percent), pharmaceuticals & fertilizer gained 3 percent apiece, while food was up 2 percent. On the flip side, cements shed 3 percent, E&Ps were down a percent while banks were flat (-0.3 percent).
During the outgoing week, insurance companies loaded up $4.2m worth of Pak equities, while mutual funds offloaded $4.5m. Foreigners remained on the sidelines with net buying of only $0.4m as compared to buying of $27.7m last week. Foreign buying was concentrated in fertilizer ($4.8m) in line with the global rally sparked by higher prices, followed by OMCs ($1.7m) & cement ($1.6m), while foreigners sold $4.2m worth of E&P’s followed by power ($1.4m).
