Stock Watch - Recovery at the eleventh hour trade pushes index up 0.5%wow.

Summary

Stock market with six weeks consecutive positive gain in KSE-100 Index turned into an overbought market. It went for correction for three days during the week. The news that Pakistan has offered Russia to participate in the divestment of government's share holding in the country's largest state-run oil and gas explorers - Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) and Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) - and become a strategic partners by acquiring shares, a positive news for the market. The KSE-100 Index which went negative 218 till Thursday turned overall positive 184 points during the week on Friday close.

During the week the average volume decline 41% to 275m from 465m previous week. The market capitalization increased by Rs.105 billion to Rs.7.902 trillion. The foreigners turned seller by $2.56m.

On Monday, the stock turned red with KSE-100 Index falling 289.44 points and closing at 40,442.81. The investors went for profit-taking in an overbought market, lack of positive triggers and bruised corporate quarterly results in most sectors.

On Tuesday the recovered back on a rally off 222 points after a correction on Monday. The Index closed at 40,664.60 with volume declining to 254m shares. The foreigners were seller with $2.56m.

On Wednesday the investors were encouraged by Bond auction where yields on three, five and 10 year Pakistan Investment Bonds (PIBs) came down by 5 bps, 26 bps and 35 bps respectively. The 10 year yield fell below 11 percent signaling possibility of drop in discount rate in coming monetary policy. However investors seemed to be cautious as they might not read too much in improvement in macro number and of an oversold market. The Index shed 133.18 points to close at 40,531.42.

Stock closed flat on Thursday as it went down by 17.25 points to close at 40,514.17. The volume declined to 227m and the foreigners remained seller with $1.94m.

The news of government offering Russia to participate in the divestment in shareholding in OGDC and PPL as strategic partner on Friday brought Index up by 402 points to close at 40,916.59. The foreigners turned buyer with $3.25m.

Participants/Activity

On average shares of 376 companies were traded. Of these 166 were gainers and 190 were losers and 20 remained unchanged.

Foreigners were net seller $2.56m during the week; companies were seller by $6.62m, Banks...