Market watch: KSE stays bearish on fears of Syria strikes

Benchmark KSE-100 index rises 67.35 points.

KARACHI:

The stock continued its recovery for the third day of the week after last week’s dismal performance.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index rose 0.31% or 67.35 points to end at 21,875.83 points, after a day of volatile trading.

“The KSE-100 Index remained bearish with low market volume of 149 million shares mainly on account of USA’s expected approval of air strikes in Syria. Cement sector remained under pressure. However, after the rollover week PSO gained investor confidence and ended the day in green up 3.9% with volume of 3.9 million shares. PRL, too, gained strong momentum with a good decent payout and closed at the upper limit lock.” Said Adeel Jafri of JSGlobal.



“A volatile trading session ended with second and third tier cement stocks closing at lower price circuits after DG Khan Cement (DGKC PA -1.4%) announced a 2.6 million tonnes per annum expansion in the southern part of Pakistan which is a stronghold of the industry’s largest player Lucky Cement (LUCK PA -1.3%).” Said Raza Rajwani of Elixir Securities.

“Financials on the other hand continue to trade in the black after the inflation numbers, released earlier this week, further confirm the possibility of a 50bps increase in discount rate in upcoming monetary policy. Pakistan Telecom (PTC PA +2.3%) continued its upward momentum on the recent directive of Supreme Court on 3G auction while Pakistan State Oil PSO (PA +3.9%) and Nishat Chunian (NCL PA +4.7%) witnessed a rebound after having corrected the most in the recent bear run.” Rajwani added.



Trade volumes fell to 149 million shares compared with Tuesday’s tally of 169 million shares.

Shares of 340 companies were traded on Wednesday. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs5.6 billion.

Fauji Cement was the volume leader with 18.6 million shares losing Rs0.41 to finish at Rs12.58. It was followed by Maple Leaf Cement with 15.2 million shares losing Rs1.09 to close at Rs21.05 and Nimir Industrial Chemicals with 10.8 million shares gaining Rs0.36 to close at Rs5.55.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs52 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2013.

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