Stock Watch - Declining market trend continues, index down 3.57%wow.

Summary

It was a short week of four days trading due to Kashmir Day holiday on Wednesday 5th Feb. The stock market kept on declining since starting from January 13 to close on Feb 7, 2020. During the period it shed 1,725 points to close at 40,143.63 on this Friday.

During the period under review, the market lost 148.73 points and the average volume declined to 168m shares from 188m previous week. The market capitalization also declined by Rs.276 billion to close at Rs.7,575 trillion. The foreigners were seller by $14.18m while individual were buyer by $7.7m.

On Monday, the equity market closed on a negative mode with benchmark KSE-100 Index dropping 1,222 points closing at 40,409.36. The hardline inflation boomed to a multi-year high of 14.56%YoY surpassing the market expectation of 13.5 to 13.7%.

The stock market on Tuesday closed on a positive note. It gained 474.86 points to close at 40,884.24. The volume declined to 146m.

The stock market on Thursday closed in a negative after Kashmir Day holiday on Wednesday. The index shed 159.84 to close at 40,724.40. The volume remained the lowest of the week with 128m.

The nightmare continued on Friday. The early day trading gained 145 points but later on the index slumped to 40,143.63 shedding 148.73 points. The volume improved to 194m from 128 m on Thursday.

Participants/Activity

On average shares of 351 companies were traded. Of these 118 were gainers and 218 were losers and 15 remained unchanged.

Foreigners were net seller of $14.18m during the week; companies were seller $0.62m, Banks were seller $1.64m; Mutual fund net seller $6.72m and individuals net buyers $7.7m.

Volume leaders during the week were: Bank of Punjab 58m; Hascol Petroleum 51m; Maple Leaf Cement 38m; Unity Foods Ltd 30m; Lotte Chemicals 26m; K Electric 6m; World Call Telecom and D. G. Khan Cement 7m each.

Triggers

* Reserves held by the SBP jumped by $359 million to $12.274 billion during the week ended on Jan 31. The total liquid reserves stood at $18.645 billion during the period under review while holding of commercial banks stood at $6.371 billion.

* Moody's Investors Service on Thursday maintained its forecast for the stable outlook of five leading Pakistani Banks over the next 12-18 months.

* The country's domestic cement despatch edged up by 3.86 percent to 23.638 million tons in 7MFY20 from 22.759 tons while exports jumped to 25.23 percent to 5.14m tons from 4.141m.

* The country's cotton production fell by 19.98...