Market watch: Foreigners buy, but trading remains dull

Benchmark KSE-100 index gains 41.54 points

KARACHI: The benchmark-100 index ended positive, but on the back of interest in limited stocks, as the wider market traded volatile and lost value to end only slightly higher on Thursday.

While it crossed the 36,500-point level, listless trading continued as the index lost most of its morning gains to end just 0.11% higher.

At close, the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark KSE 100-share index gained 41.54 points to end at 36,540.97.



Elixir Security analyst Faisal Bilwani said equities closed marginally positive after trading listless in a narrow band of little over 200 points. “Positive open on gains in oil stocks failed to generate any serious excitement in the wider market as investors stayed on the sidelines,” said Bilwani.

“Interest was highly selective with dismal volumes in most blue-chips with the exception of Engro Corp (ENGRO, +1.5%) and Engro Foods (EFOODS, +4.1%) that were higher on rumors that expected stake-sale of the latter would likely go through at a premium.

“Small and medium size enterprises were again on top of the volume charts, but most saw profit-taking as retail investors traded cautiously during futures roll-over week.”

JS Global analyst Ahmed Saeed Khan said volatility prevailed as the index made an intraday high of +184 points and a low of -37 points to close at 36,541. “EFOODS (+4.08%) and ENGRO (+1.54%) were the major index movers,” said Khan.

“On the other hand, the banking sector remained under pressure on the back of SBP’s cut in policy rate to 5.75% to boost growth, where top laggards of the aforementioned sector were MCB (-0.9%) and HBL (-0.5%).



“Global crude oil prices that reached to a six month high failed to entice investors as profit taking was witnessed across the oil sector, where major laggards of the sector for the day were MARI (-0.5%) and BYCO (-3.13%).”

Trade volumes fell to 213 million shares compared with Wednesday’s tally of 269 million.

Shares of 384 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 130 stocks closed higher, 227 declined while 27 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs9.7 billion.

K-Electric Limited was the volume leader with 27.9 million shares, losing Rs0.09 to finish at Rs7.94. It was followed by Jahangir Siddiqui and Company with 12.9 million shares, losing Rs1.10 to close at Rs21.76 and Power Cement with 11.4 million shares, gaining Rs0.05 to close at Rs11.40.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs175 million during the trading session, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2016.

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