Friday, July 26 2024

Stocks tumble 928 points on political tensions
Pakistani shares snapped a two-day recovery spree on Thursday as investors resorted to profit-taking in a volatile session, dragging the benchmark index below 79,000 despite a bullish start on better corporate results. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said the stock market witnessed an across-the-board downturn due to political uncertainty. He said investor concerns about a settlement of $15 billion due to Chinese IPPs, a surging power tariff impacting industrial earnings, political noise over banning opposition, and a weak rupee led to a bearish close. Topline Securities Ltd said the selling spree towards the last hours of the session wiped out early gains. During the session, blue-chip stocks like Bank Al-Habib, Hub Power, Systems Ltd, MCB Bank and Meezan Bank negatively contributed 396 points to the index. Conversely, PSO, Pakistan Oilfield and Attock Petroleum saw some buying interest as they added 40 points.
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Wednesday, July 24 2024

Stocks rebound on rate cut speculation
Ending its downward trend, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) rebounded significantly on Tuesday, driven by speculation about a potential rate cut by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in its monetary policy announcement on July 29. In the morning, trading began on a positive note, with the KSE-100 index reaching its intra-day high of 79,585.34 points. Approval of new privatisation laws by the National Assembly standing committee to avoid further delay along with postponement of a cabinet meeting for slapping ban on the opposition contributed to bullish sentiment at the bourse. Additionally, the appreciation of Pakistan’s fiscal measures by Fitch Ratings and improving economic indicators also provided vital support to the market’s positive performance. Although the index fell to the intra-day low of 78,634.15 points in the afternoon, it ended the day with modest gains. Major contributors to the market’s gains were exploration and production (E&P), banking and automotive sectors.
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Asian markets lack direction as disappointing US tech earnings impact stocks; yen strengthens
Asian stocks were subdued on Wednesday after lacklustre earnings from US tech behemoths Tesla and Alphabet dented sentiment, while the yen hit a six-week high ahead of a central bank meeting next week where a rate hike remains on the table. The US dollar was broadly firm, with traders watching out for an inflation reading on Friday and Federal Reserve meeting next week. The Bank of Japan is also due to meet next week, where a 10 basis point hike is priced at a 44% chance. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS), was 0.08% lower at 566.26, not far from the one-month low of 562.43 it touched on Monday. Japan's Nikkei (.N225), fell 0.23% while Taiwan financial markets are closed due to a typhoon. Nasdaq futures fell 0.5%, while S&P 500 futures eased 0.36% after Tesla (TSLA.O), reported its smallest profit margin in more than five years. Shares of Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), slipped in after-hours trade even after the firm beat revenue and profit targets.
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Monday, July 22 2024

Q2 tech earnings hold key to market rebound
As earnings season goes into full swing, bullish investors hope solid corporate results will stem a tumble in technology shares that has cooled this year’s US stock rally. The S&P 500’s technology sector has dropped nearly 6% in just over a week, shedding about $900 billion in market value as growing expectations of interest rate cuts and a second Trump presidency draw money away from this year’s winners and into sectors that have languished in 2024. The S&P 500 has fared somewhat better, losing 1.6% in just over a week, with declines in tech partly offset by sharp gains in areas such as financials, industrials and small caps. The benchmark index is up more than 16% so far this year.
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Friday, July 19 2024

Stocks hit another high on positive outlook
The stock market resumed its record-setting spree after a two-day break on Thursday as investors continued value-hunting for improved external funding prospects following the signing of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This helped the benchmark index close at an all-time high. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks closed at an all-time high as investors weighed Fitch ratings’ projections for a cut in the State Bank of Pakistan’s policy rate to 16pc by the end of 2024 and 14pc by 2025 on slowing inflation, economic expansion of 3.2pc on the back of high agri growth, easing monetary policy, slowing inflation and cut in fiscal deficit to 6.7pc in FY25. He added that the agreement for a $7 bn loan to push for IMF-mandated fiscal reforms played a catalyst role in the bullish close.
Related news categories: business economic-indicators psx stock-exchanges