KARACHI: The stock market likely to trade in range bound during the next week owing to strengthening of rupee value and improved foreign exchange reserves.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited believed the market may portray a range-bound behavior next week. While consolidating macroeconomic fundamentals led by strengthening PKR/USD parity and building up of FOREX reserves pose upside risks, we highlight the ongoing third wave of COVID-19 to be a major risk to the investors’ confidence.
The upcoming results season can attract bulls particularly amongst cyclical sectors.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) is currently trading at a PER of 6.6x (2021) compared to Asia Pac regional average of 17.1x and while offering DY of around 7.1 percent versus around 2.5 percent offered by the region.
This week saw bears return to the forefront as the market sentiment was in severe pressure. Changes in the cabinet including the Finance Ministry, announcement by ECC and subsequent rejection of the decision by the cabinet to resume trade with India, and the ongoing third wave of COVID-19 all contributed to the pessimism in the market.
Failure to meet the deadline for the first tranche payment to IPPs further added to the overall pessimism. This week also saw successful issuance of the USD denominated Eurobonds in international markets that raised USD 2.5 billion.
The market closed at 44,301 points, shedding 1,221 points WoW.
Sector-wise negative contributions came from i) Technology & Communication (341 points), ii) Commercial Banks (164 points), iii) Oil & Gas Exploration Companies (147 points), iv) Cement (144 points) and v) Power Generation and Distribution (117 points).
Meanwhile, sectors that contributed positively include i) Fertilizer (91 points) and ii) Automobile Assembler (24 points). Scrip-wise negative contributors were TRG (328 points), HUBC (71 points), LUCK (61 points), PPL (58 points) and PSO (51 points). Whereas, positive contributors included ENGRO (120 points), FCCL (22 points) and SRVI (20 points).
Foreign selling continued this week clocking-in at USD 4.9 million compared to a net sell of USD 0.1 million last week. Selling was witnessed in Technology and Communication (USD 6.0 million) and Power Gen. (USD 1.4 million).
On the domestic front, major buying was reported by Insurance Companies (USD 6.8 million) and Individuals (USD 5.4 million). Average volumes arrived at 377 million shares (down by 18 percent WoW) while average value traded settled at USD 133 million (down by 16 percent WoW).
