KARACHI: As the governor of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is echoing the incumbent governments existing stance of fulfilling IMF’s prior actions, the experts said that the IMF agreement will set direction of the stock market.
“The upcoming Board agreement expected in July 2019 to be a major trigger for the market as it would set in motion a period of economic recovery,” analysts at Arif Habib Limited said.
Weakness of the Pak Rupee against USD, unchanged Fitch’s rating and ongoing debate over the Federal Budget 2019/2020 in the Parliament kept the domestic bourse in-check this week. Given lack of triggers and profit taking in large caps, the KSE-100 index closed down by 448 points (1.26 percent WoW) to 35,125.
Negative sector-wise contributions came from i) Commercial Banks (181 points), ii) Fertilizer (88 points), iii) Cement (49 points), iv) Oil & Gas Marketing Companies (42 points), and v) Pharmaceuticals (29 points).
Whereas, sectors that contributed positively include Power Generation & Distribution (38 points) and E&P (31 points). Scrip-wise negative contributions came from FFC (62 points), BAHL (43 points), PPL (38 points), LUCK (31 points) and KAPCO (31 points).
Whereas, positive scrip-wise contributions came from HUBC (83 points), OGDC (54 points), and POL (37 points).
Foreign selling was continued this week clocking-in at USD 5.7 million compared to a net sell of USD 4.9 million last week. Selling was witnessed in Exploration & Production (USD 4.5 million) and Cement (USD 1.4 million).
On the domestic front, major buying was reported by Individuals (USD 7.9 million) and Banks / DFIs (USD 3.7 million).
Average Volumes settled at 125 million shares (down by 8.5 percent WoW) while value traded clocked-in at USD 27 million (down by 21 percent WoW).
