KARACHI, July 6: Average carryover (COT) or ‘badla’ rates in the equity market declined to 9.2 per cent during the week ended Friday, from 11.8 per cent the earlier week, IP Securities said in its COT report issued on Saturday.

Notwithstanding the lower rates, the COT investment increased by 9.8 per cent to Rs3.43 billion during the week. Average COT investment was stated to have risen due to an upward shift in the COT volume by 11.3 per cent to 147.8 million shares, compared to 132.8 million shares the previous week.

“All three key stocks, namely, PTCL, Hubco and PSO remained at the top with Hubco showing the highest COT investment of Rs1.15 billion during the week against the earlier week’s COT investment of Rs994.9 million”, said analyst Humaira Zaheer at IP Securities.

Volume in Hubco stood at 48.6 million shares with the average badla rate at 8.2 per cent. Analysts observed that PSO took the next highest place in terms of COT investment, though week-on-week, investment in the oil marketing company’s stock declined 5.6 per cent to Rs650 million, from Rs690 million. “This reduction in COT investment in PSO could be due to genuine buying on the back of margin revisions at the start of the current fiscal year”, analysts said. PSO posted volume of 4.6 million shares, down 6.4 per cent from the earlier week; its average rate worked out at 9.1 per cent. PTCL showed badla investment of Rs563 million, which represented 11 per cent increase over the earlier week; the volume stood at 32.2 million shares and average rate was 8.5 per cent.

D.G. Khan Cement spotted the highest average badla rate at 11 per cent, with COT investment up by 38.7 per cent to Rs65.8 million and average volume up by 28.4 per cent to Rs6.5 million. ICI Pakistan also saw a high average badla rate of 10.6 per cent; though both volume and value of COT investment stood lower than the earlier week, respectively by 6 per cent to 2.5 million shares and by 5.3 per cent to Rs99.5 million.

Analysts observed that there was COT funding of substantial sum, which contributed to the lower COT rate during the week. “We believe that the average COT investment will likely remain at current levels unless any positive news for the market is observed”, IP Securities concluded.