Investors remain confident in Pakistan’s market

KARACHI: Despite the recent wave of terrorism in Pakistan, foreign investors bought $4.2 million in shares last week.

At the Pakistan Stock Exchange, investors traded $21 million worth of shares; with their net buying of $ 4.2million shares depicting confidence in Pakistan’s economy. The benchmark KSE-100 Index closed in red though on disappointed earnings

According to Zeeshan Afzal of Insight Securities incidents of terrorism are a cause of concern for foreign investors, but they also understand Pakistan is doing all it could to eliminate extremism. “Foreign investors understand this phenomenon is short term. So they turn to the economy and its strong indicators and that keeps their interest alive,” Zeeshan Afzal said.

The local scenario is a bit foggy, though, political noise and in-house financing are concerns to local investors. KSE0-100 Index fell 549 points or 1% to close the week at 49,375. “Although the matter is more with Islamabad and Lahore’s brokers yet investors were cautious,” Zeeshan Afzal added.    

Investors traded Rs 88 billion worth of 1.76 billion shares. On WoW basis both value and volumes were 5 and 15 percent down from previous week. During the week market lost Rs 83 billion of its capitalization to close the week at 9,798 billion. Weekly high and low was 50,322 and 49,097 respective, creating a trading breadth of 1225.