KARACHI: Movement in the international oil price and domestic political events are likely to set the direction of the Karachi Stock Exchange next week, which is likely to see the launch of Margin Trading System, dealers said.
Expected launch of the Margin Trading System elevated investor sentiments in the outgoing week as the KSE-100 index closed 6.9 percent up week-on-week at 12,000-point level.
Volumes too gathered pace as they rose by 49.5 percent w-o-w to 146.5 million shares. During the week, SBP released the fiscal account figures, which showed the deficit widening to 2.9 percent of the GDP in first half of current fiscal. Further, government’s decision to first raise the petroleum prices by about 10 percent and then reduce this increase by half kept investors on their toes, said Rabia Tariq, an analyst at JS Research, a local brokerage research group.
NBP astonished investors by announcing a higher than expected cash payout of Rs7.5 per share and a stock dividend of 25 percent, along with earnings of Rs17.6bn (earning per share Rs13.05) in 2010, flat year-on-year. As a result, the stock rose 20% in this week. Moreover, banking spreads data revealed average industry spreads rising by 32 basis points y-o-y to 7.57 percent, keeping the sector in limelight as it outperformed the index by 5 percent.
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