Policy rate, oil price movement to set stock market’s direction

Stocks will react to the impact of upcoming monetary policy and oil price movement; although the bourse largely remained unstable during the last few sessions.
Analyst at KASB Securities said the sentiments will be influenced by the inflation numbers to be announced early next week, the budget-related news, secondary offering of shares of Engro Fertilizer and positive quarterly results.
Investors should track oil prices movement and political developments, he added.
The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) 100-share Index shed 45.16 points, or 0.13 percent, to close at 33,729.96 during the last week.
The KSE-30 shares index lost 32.33 points, or 0.14 percent, to end at 21,673.58.
The average daily turnover during the week stood at 253 million shares per day, down 23 percent as compared to the previous week. Volumes dwindled during the week on news of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) mulling over investigating the sources of funds flowing in the market.
Foreign investor portfolio investment was, however, encouraging with a net inflow of $21.6 million during this shortened week as against $7.7 million inflow last week.
EFU Life Assurance, Indus Motors, Pakistan Tobacco Company, Arif Habib Corporation and Ghani Glass were the major gainers, while Archroma Pakistan Ltd, TRG Pakistan, Atlas Honda, Indus Dyeing and Gul Ahmed Textile were the major losers in the benchmark KSE-100 Index.
Stock specific performance was largely driven by result announcements. The top news for the week was that Karachi Stock Exchange had suspended the operations of ACE Securities Limited on April 27 after the brokerage house failed to reply to the bourse notice that sought an explanation on investors’ complaints that their holdings were misappropriated.
The Karachi Stock Exchange board advised the management to take all necessary steps to protect investors’ interest and the process of verification of claims should be initiated.
It asked the claimants to bring forward the relevant evidences to substantiate the accuracy of their claims.
The week was flooded with the result announcements.
Although result expectations were largely positive, there were some big disappointments related to the National Bank of Pakistan and Pakistan State Oil (PSO).
HBL Pakistan and MCB Bank posted surprising results due to exceptional net interest income.
Indus Motor led the market due to surging margins.
Profit booking by mutual funds’ exacerbated the negative sentiment.
Oil stocks were up on the persistence of uptrend in oil prices.