KSE remains sluggish, investors await monetary policy announcement

KARACHI: The local bourse underwent another range bound session, as investors remained at the sidelines and awaited the monetary policy announcement due later in the day.
Though Farrukh Khan’s announcement as the new SECP chairman was welcomed by investors, but it failed to provide an impetus against anticipation over the MPS.
The benchmark KSE-100 index accumulated 18 points to close at 11,163 levels. The KSE-30 index squeezed 3.13 points and closed at 10745.17 levels, while the all share index closed at 7776.55 points following a gain of 15.81 points.
Volumes remained sluggish, as a meager 90 million shares were traded. The second and third tier stocks dominated volumes, while DSFL topped the list with 17 million shares. Out of total 386 scrips, 189 gained, 180 dwindled and 17 remain unchanged.
Total market capitalisation stood at Rs 3,048.13 billion, while the total ready market value stood at Rs 2.32 billion. KSE future volume stood at 3.08 million shares and the future value stood at Rs 326.69 million with a future spread of 7.73 percent. Monetary policy phobia kept the local bourse under pressure, mainly due to the manufacturing concerns, rising debt portfolio and the local and export sales by dint of the decline in local and export demand.
The low-priced stocks of local financial group did pour-in some turnover (30 percent of the volume was poured-in by low priced stocks of Dewan Group); however value of traded shares hovered around the lower side. Local stakeholders were further grieved with news of failure in increasing gas output from Quadirpur gas fields despite under taking an expensive venture of compressors installation.
Threat of a sustained rising trend of inflation, primarily due to an expected increase in local fuel prices, reformed GST and its financial implication, the gloomy economic horizon and absence of update of leverage mechanism is unlikely to allow a broad based rally.
‘Thereby keeping chances of price erosion on higher side, selective interest may however continue to invite snap rallies, while low quantum increase in index heavy weight may continue to disallow the reflection of underlying sentiment on the benchmark,’ said a market expert Hasnain Asghar Ali.