As of June 28 - July 2, 2010
Weekly Stock Market Review
Lull prevails at the KSE

By M. Bilal Aftab

The Karachi Stock Exchange once again closed in red and the gains accumulated during a few sessions of the previous week were finally wiped out towards the end. Since there was substantial support at KSE from the foreign players recently which finally disappeared in the wake of declining trend in international and regional markets increasing aggressive selling from the foreigners. This not only forced the local players to liquidate their holdings but also triggered a widespread selling towards the end of the week. The market being already in the grip of uncertainty to various issues related to the national economy, politics and post-budget infrastructural changes, law and order further added to the misery.

No signs of early recovery can be sited in near future with a visible exit of the foreigners and no follow up support present either by the local institutions or by the government. Trading sessions in coming days may witness sluggish maneuvering with a few technical hiccups where market would close in green in some sessions.

The benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 9,697.65 points on Friday recording a slide of 99.20 points or roughly 1 per cent over the week’s opening of 9,796.85 points. The index moved in a range of 290 points as the peak for the week, 9,859.54 points was witnessed intra-day on Monday whereas the index ebbed as low as 9,569.68 points on Tuesday despite being the best session of the week.

The most notable element related to the happenings at KSE was a sharp decline in the quantum of activity depicting a depletion of interest by the market players. Total market volume, which was 2,624 million shares for the preceding week, declined by over 90 per cent to 259 million shares. This also substantially brought down the average daily volume to 51.7 million shares as against 524.9 million shares recorded previously.

Lotte Pakistan PTA Limited regained its slot of the most active stock for the week. A total of 23.1 million shares of LOTPTA changed hands during the week which was about 9 per cent of the total market volume recorded for the period. LOTPTA was followed by Jahangir Siddiqui & Co Ltd and Silkbank Ltd. in which an aggregate share volume of 17.3 million shares and 9.9 million shares was recorded respectively.

Amongst the gainers, Wyeth Pakistan Limited led the others for the week when its share value appreciated by Rs. 66.1 or 6.7 per cent to close at Rs. 1,049.21. Bata Pakistan Limited and Fazal Textile Mills Limited remained the other two major price gainers with respective gains of Rs. 53.15 and Rs. 40.12 and closed at Rs. 589.23 and Rs. 359.13 respectively.

On the losing side, Unilever Pakistan Limited remained the most badly hit when its stock price slid to Rs. 3,909.82 losing Rs. 60.7 or 1.5 per cent during the week under review. Unilever was followed by Colgate-Palmolive (Pakistan) Ltd and Unilever Pakistan Foods Ltd. where respective price declines of Rs. 53.8 and Rs. 40.0 were noted during the week.

A significantly higher than normal activity was witnessed in Amtex Limited when its 5-days average volume surpassed its 30-days average by over 275 per cent. A total of 1.368 millions shares of Amtex were traded on each of the 5 trading sessions last week.