Karachi – While the market-men continued to celebrate the appointment of Chairman SECP, it has certainly raised the expectations of an early launch of flexible ready board leverage product.
From the onset, index moved speedily upwards breaching 11,900 level, marred by lower volumes in contrast with year to date average volumes. The benchmark seemed like crossing the 12,000 level, but profit booking from investors kept the bull under control as the index closed at 11,910 points. The KSE-100 index closed at 11,909.73 with a gain of 51.56 points, while total volume stood at 60,027,293 along with the total value of 3,812,170,408.
Fertilizer stocks were making headway, after news of urea price hike, to compensate for winter gas curtailment. PPL and POL moved with the wind while OGDC restricted the index’s movement. HBL and ABL led the banking sector, but the three big guns controlled their aggressive behavior.
The activity of foreign funds will resume in the upcoming year, meanwhile market behavior may be dictated by punters and top tier fund managers, and it is believed the market will remain bullish but volumes are expected to decline. Fertilizer stocks invited aggressive interest mainly by local participants, while the stocks likely to face a tough time due to high debts and low growth in local and export demand kept the participants cautious. However stocks having support of the respective groups did invite turnover mainly due to portfolio dressing ahead of financial year end. Snap rallies anticipation of portfolio appreciation in holding companies did provide a low risk trading opportunity to the market men besides pouring in turnover to a generally dull bourse.
The local sentiment will stay nervous mainly due to economic and financial issues which include high circular debt, rising inflation and high government borrowings, thus making an ideal case for the authorities to increase the benchmark interest rates, said Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein. Despite all activities the local bourse will continue to stay dependant on the activity by local financial groups, holding companies and off-shore participants, in the absence of ready board leverage product, thus keeping the trading horizon restricted, he added.
