Summary The activity during the week remained lackluster.
KARACHI (Dunya News) - The market entered a losing streak driven by a mix of profit taking, uneventful results in the ongoing quarterly earnings season and renewed doubts on the country’s macro-economic health.
The political front remained mostly calm with market pundits expecting a smooth progress towards an interim setup once the incumbent government vacates office.
The outgoing week maintained a dull note where the index closed at 45,259pts, down by 1.8 percent on the back of weakening economic indicators. The activity during the week remained lackluster as evident from a decline in both average daily turnover and average daily turnover value by 37 percent and 19 percent, respectively.
According to an analyst from Spectrum Securities KSE-100 sector-wise performance shows that Commercial Banks sector pulled down the index by 267points, owing banks report low profitability which decreased the income tax collection from financial institutions by 21 percent in nine months ended March 31, 2018.
Moreover, Cement sector dragged the sector down by 200 points due to uncertainty regarding the upcoming results and rising cost of production.
Oil and Gas Exploration dragged down the index by 197 points, due to gas production dropped to 3,828 MMCFD in March and OGDC shares were offloaded in a block sale by a foreign institutional investor at the beginning of the week.
During the week, foreigners were net sellers of 41.8 million dollars, while on the local front, Mutual Funds, Individuals and Other Organizations remained net buyers of 24.6 million dollars, 15.2 million dollars, and 5.8 million dollars respectively.
BMA Capital Management said that looking ahead, we opine the coming week to be largely lackluster as investors would likely adopt a wait and watch approach ahead of the budget due on 27th-Apr’18.
Moreover, futures roll over week would also keep the market under pressure amid low turnover. A number of blue chips are due to report results next week and any positive surprise in results could ignite excitement in select scrips/sectors. Furthermore, investors would closely track the negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties over the choice of the interim Prime Minister and Chief Ministers of respective provinces.
(Details by Haris Zamir)
