KARACHI, Aug 20: Carryover transaction (COT) rates on the Karachi Stock Exchange last week showed a modest increase of 74 basis points at 15.8 per cent, as demand for fund showed a significant improvement owing to a sharp rebound in the share market at the fag-end of the week.

An idea of liquidity crunch may well be had from the fact that many leveraged borrowers failed to line up funds for the purchase of shares of PTCL and OGDC because of tight money market, analysts said. “The demand for badla financing was on the higher side because of snap weekend recovery, which already nears its cap of Rs12 billion.”

Badla investment had declined to Rs11.7 billion a week earlier and fell below the cap level of Rs12.00 billion because of higher rates of shares and a modest rise in the volume figure, they said.

However, the badla rate on the Lahore Stock Exchange fell to 10.1 per cent from the previous week’s 10.4 per cent, but the investment rose to Rs0.84 billion from the last week’s 0.78bn, showing an increase of 7.3 per cent.

Spread of the futures market was back to the normal and was quoted around 8.84 per cent from the previous 2.12 per cent, reflecting the return of a bull market after some positive developments on the proposed extension of the settlement period from the current 30 days to 90 days or above.