Market watch: Index drops steeply as investors exercise caution

Benchmark KSE-100 index falls 374 points.

KARACHI: The bears continued to call the shots as negative momentum from Friday poured into Monday’s session. Index heavyweights saw heavy selling during the day along with investors’ concern over continuous reported foreign selling.

At the end of the day, the Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 1.40% percent or 374.08 points to end at 26,391.41.

“Index heavy Oil and Gas Development Companies (OGDC PA -1.9%), Pakistan State Oil (PSO PA -2.05%) and Pakistan Oilfields (POL PA -2.5%) along with MCB Bank (MCB PA -4.4%) fell that further pushed benchmark index to close at a 3-week low,” said Naveen Yaseen from Elixir Securities.



“Financials such as Bank Alfalah (BAFL PA -3.13%) succumbed to downward pressure with anticipation of a cut in the benchmark rate on lower inflation along with rising forex reserves.”

“With no immediate triggers and expected foreign selling in index heavy oil and bank names, expect the market to remain dull with limited interest only in select names,” said Yaseen, adding that at the current levels Pakistan equities present attractive buying opportunities based on strong valuations and expectations of improved macros.

Meanwhile, Ovais Ahsan of JS Global said “sanity would prevail in the next few sessions. “We expect that in due course of time as frontier investors come into buy when the MSCI Frontier Index is recomposed and Pakistan’s weight increases.”

Trade volumes fell to 108 million shares compared with Friday’s tally of 159 million.

Shares of 353 companies were traded on Monday. At the end of the day, 94 stocks closed higher, 236 declined while 23 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs6.3 billion.



TRG Pakistan Limited was the volume leader with 9.7 million shares, losing Rs1.00 to finish at Rs14.17. It was followed by Faysal Bank with 5.7 million shares, gaining Rs0.03 to close at Rs13.23 and Lafarge Pakistan with 5.5 million shares, losing Rs0.16 to close at Rs11.08.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs422 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2014.

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