KARACHI, July 2: Carryover trade (COT) rates last week remained on the higher side at 14.9 per cent owing partly to year-end concerns of the financiers and partly to tight money market followed by central bank’s open market operations, which sucked in billions of rupees out of the system.

Total leveraging through COT and futures, therefore, fell by Rs0.4 billion at Rs21.7bn, although spreads between the two remained on the higher side because of year-end considerations, analysts said.

The weighted average COT rates on the Lahore Stock Exchange soared to 17.00 per cent from the previous week’s 10.6 per cent because of pressure on liquidity on the money market.

But on the other hand, investment on the COT market fell to Rs12.7bn from Rs14.9bn a week earlier after the COT volume shrank to 125 shares from the previous 147m shares.

“Shifting of leverage positions from the COT to stock market futures was evident from the decline in COT business and an increase of 13m shares in the open market interest in futures,” analysts said.