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Foreign investment at KSE hits highest level in 14 months

By Tanveer Ahmed

KARACHI: Massive foreign investment inflows took place in the stock market during the current week, which resulted in the highest level of net buying during the last 14 months.

However, analysts and market players sense 'fishy play' by the bigwigs behind the rising portfolio investment, which started going up in the last two to three days.

Offshore's gross buying during the week stood at $30 million whereas they offloaded $14 million worth of shares, recording net buying of $16 million, the highest level in 14 months.

"The rising portfolio investment is not 'motivated by market fundamentals,' but is a deliberate move by the local big shots in the stock market to minimise their impairment losses as much as they can by June 30, 2009 when the current financial year closes," remarked a well-known analyst when asked for his comments on the encouraging trends in the stock market regarding portfolio investment.

These are local funds, he pointed out that are being routed through foreign destinations to push the market up to higher levels to book the impairment losses at lower levels.

The last year's market crunch caused massive losses to investors and when the market opened several big companies incurred losses on their investment in the market during the floor period. Upon it, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) directed the companies to book their losses on quarterly basis instead of at once, which could have been a major blow to the financial health of these companies.

At a time, analysts said, when market fundamentals are not strong, the budget 2009-10 announced during the current month offered nothing to boost the stock market, but the rising interest of offshore investors in the local market is beyond comprehension. Though, coming results season might bear some interest for the foreigners in the shape of anticipated better dividend yields, however this was not so attractive to net the foreign investors so quickly.

The local brokerage houses, one market player said has the arrangements with the international fund managers to route their money through them in the local market and same is the case with the current artificial bullish sentiment.

By the end of June, 30 2009, last of the current year, the market could touch 7,500 points level currently trading at 7,128 points and more foreign investment could find its way in the remaining couple of days of the current year.

Analysts said that post June 30, 2009 scenario would tell the real story whether this current inflow of foreign funds was genuine or a tactic on part of those, who sway the trading in the market.

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