Summary This week, the biggest driver for the index was the oil and gas sector.
KARACHI (Dunya News) - Pakistan Stock Market (PSX) failed to get any direction and the index closed with a nominal rise where foreign selling continued unabated, booking profit on available improvement in blue chips and trading stocks.
The KSE-100 Index was mostly range-bound this week as the earnings season drew to a close, leaving few triggers in the market. The Index lost 41 points to close at 41,064. The biggest driver for the index was the Oil and Gas Sector due to a surge in International Crude Oil price. The global price surged over the development that in recent meeting of OPEC, the producing and exporting countries might cut the daily supply of crude oil.
Overall positive S&P review and decent earnings season were overshadowed by incessant foreign selling in first 2 days of the week (attributed to month end rebalancing ) and political noise.
The week saw significant foreign portfolio investment outflow, of USD 30.7m, but local players were able to absorb the selling pressure.
Investors and analysts focused on some of the major economic events such as China vowed to continue its support for the CPEC projects irrespective of the change in federal government, 2) ADB approved US$800mn Multi-Tranche Financing Facility for CAREC road corridor development in Pakistan, 3) GoP increased the petroleum prices for the month of November with MOGAS/HSD increasing by Rs 2.49 per liter and Rs 5.19 per liter respectively, 4) the country’s total reserves decreased 0.3% on weekly basis of 95 million dollars to 19.84 billion during the last week.
However, the new week will again glue to political developments and any positives from Islamabad would dictate the market.
(Story by Haris Zamir)
