Today's Market

The market continued its meltdown closing lower 250pts at 46874. Volumes were 164mln shares while value traded was Rs9.4bln. Delay in announcement of the Panama verdict has made activity moribund, posting triple digit declines on low volumes. Lack of liquidity has certainly not helped sentiment. On top of that quarterly announcements have so far lacked excitement. That said, it may be noted that as of today the index is down 2108pts since Feb 23 when the verdict was reserved. Fertilizers, Banks, Chemicals and Pharma have been hit most by the slide. Cements and Steel have evaded eroding values by far. 

This year outflow has been USD159mln compared to USD338mln in 2016. However the outflow has shown signs of abating as the MSCI upgrade looms in May. April has seen an inflow of USD 3.5mln till yesterday.

The figure below shows most actively traded scrips by value and their percentage change in price expressed as an index with 1 being the base. A 0.01 increase reflects a 1 percentage change in price since Feb 23. 

DCL has lost 35pc, KEL 18pc, NBP 8pc, BOP 21pc, NML 10pc, ENGRO 9pc and TRG 9pc.

EPCL, PRL and MARI outperformed the market in a big way.

With positive economic newsflow regarding the country continuing, we believe values could open up as soon as this damaging Panama case uncertainty is out of the way, especially in Construction and related materials and MSCI EM stocks.