Index retreats for second day amid profit-taking

Published January 24, 2015
Pedestrians walk past the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) in Karachi on November 5, 2014. — AFP/file
Pedestrians walk past the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) in Karachi on November 5, 2014. — AFP/file

KARACHI: The KSE-100 index closed in the red for the second day on Friday, shedding 120.38 points to finish at 34,026.59. Net portfolio outflow was noted at $4.27 million.

Stocks moved both ways for much of the session, looking for a direction. However, towards the end investors decided to take profit as they thought that the speculation of a cut in discount rate in the monetary policy, due today, had been fully priced in.

In the oil and gas sector, POL was down 2.2pc. The cement sector witnessed profit-taking. KEL declined 4.8pc due to lapse of the dividend proposal and INIL escalated 2.1pc on the back of healthy quarterly results.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti said the stocks closed bearish amid cautious activity on pressure in oil stocks after West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude price fell to $46 a barrel.

“Late session support in selected fertiliser, banking and energy stocks on speculation ahead of major earnings announcements due next week, favourable impact of declining oil prices and reports of rising banking spreads by 20bps on a month-on-month basis, led the market to close above session lows,” said Mehanti.

Regarding the weekly market performance, research analysts at AKD Securities stated that in anticipation of the expected policy rate cut, the market continued its rally through the first half of the week before profit-taking set in to limit the KSE-100 index week-on-week gain to 241 points, or 0.71pc.

Major news flow impacting the market included: non-availability of POL products with PSO suffering from liquidity pressures; the widening of current account deficit by 18pc year-on-year to $2.36bn despite a surplus of $76m in December, and a week-on-week drop of 0.2pc in total liquid foreign reserves to $15.02bn.

Published in Dawn January 24th , 2015

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