1
KARACHI: Stocks continued to slide, with the KSE-100 index down by 35.06 points to close the shortened Friday session at 29,318.06.
On the heavyweight oil and gas sector, Mari Petroleum plunged by Rs19.57 to hit its ‘lower circuit breaker’ after the finance minister refused the proposal to change its pricing formula.
NIB Bank, BAFL and NPL remained the most active scrips. Foreign investors continued cherry picking with fresh net inflow of $1.3 million. The overseas investors bought shares valued at $1m on the electricity sector and $0.5m each on the oil and gas and cement sectors.
Yet, it was offset by profit-taking by mutual funds through sales of $2.33m worth equity. Other local institutional players remained on the sidelines, awaiting the start of results reporting season. Over the week, the KSE-100 index fell by 302 points or 1.02pc. The foreign inflow also dried down by 56pc WoW to $8.2m. “The dismal performance of the market was largely due to lack of interest by investors in Ramazan as well as due to the upcoming monetary policy”, stated analysts at brokerage AKD Securities in a weekly report.
 |
Daily average traded volume fell by another 43.9pc WoW to 59.6m shares. News flows affecting investor sentiments during the week included the government assurances to IMF regarding imposition of a new Nepra surcharge to recover Rs240bn from consumers; an announcement by the Privatisation Commission that it intends to complete selling off minority stakes in OGDCL by September and PIA by the end of December this year.
Other news flow which impacted investor outlook included increase in foreign exchange reserves to $14.6bn following disbursement of fourth tranche of $556m under the IMF EFF and an uptick in cement dispatches for June.
Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2014
