Market watch: Bearish trend continues as index slides 474 points

Benchmark KSE-100 index falls 1.44%.

KARACHI: As institutional selling continued to dominate, the index bore the brunt and went below 32,500 on the first day of the week. Traders treaded with caution ahead of the monetary policy statement.

At close on Monday, the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 1.44% or 474.18 points to end at 32,454.91.

Elixir Securities analyst Faisal Bilwani said the benchmark KSE-100 broke 32,500 levels on thin turnover. “Stocks opened sideways, however, oil stocks that tracked recent declines in global crude pulled wider market in the red,” said Bilwani.  “Additionally, reports of foreign selling spooked investors with sentiment driver Engro Corporation (ENGRO, -4.8%) hitting lower price limit intraday.



“Textiles, Nishat Mills (NML, -3.65%) and Nishat Chunian (NCL, -0.4%) closed lower on morning news that raised concerns of possible negative implications of recent lifting of death sentence moratorium on GSP Plus status for Pakistani exports.

“By mid day, reports of equity protected funds struggling to offload did further damage and to the disappointment of many, stocks failed to stage any last minute comeback,” said Bilwani.

Bilwani added that fear of further selling by institutions, primarily foreign funds, overshadowed moves in debt market that are adjusting for a 100 bps cut in policy announcement due Saturday March 21.

JS Global analyst Ovais Ahsan said the negative opening can mainly be attributed to continued foreign selling .“Last week’s total foreign portfolio outflow of over $28 million left everyone guessing on when the selling would abate,” said Ahsan.

“Even though the market has a lot of positive triggers to look ahead to, including the monetary policy statement, investors were caught on the back foot by consistent selling by international investors.

“This could potentially be attributed to the important meeting of the US Federal Reserve which starts on Tuesday and is likely to provide guidance on when eventually interest rates are raised in the US.

“The banking sector faced selling pressure as UBL (-2.54%) and NBP (-1.21%) came off in anticipation of a rate cut of up to 50bps in this week’s monetary policy.”

Trade volumes fell to 120 million shares compared to 157 million on Friday.

Shares of 348 companies were traded on Monday. Of these, 248 declined, 89 closed higher and 11 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs7.1 billion.

Maple Leaf Cement was the volume leader with 11.8 million shares, losing Rs0.25 to close at Rs52.96. It was followed by TRG Pakistan Limited with 10.5 million shares, losing Rs0.04 to close at Rs15.54 and Lalpir Power Limited with 6.2 million shares, losing Rs1.80 to close at Rs34.36.



Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs659 million worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  17^th,  2015.

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