Morning Market Brief 15th Feb. 2021

The Benchmark KSE100 index have created a bearish engulfing pattern on weekly chart after facing rejection from a resistant trend line and a strong horizontal resistant region, mean while a triple top have been formatted on week chart during last trading week. Currently daily and weekly momentum indicators are in bearish mode as Stochastic and MAORSI have generated bearish crossovers on both time frames and MACD have started changing its direction towards bearish side but hourly stochastic is showing a pullback sign which indicates that index may take an intraday spike which could be fueled by international oil prices, in this case oil & gas exploration sector would lead the positive sentiment today. Overall index have entered into bearish zone on weekly and daily chart but it needs to be very cautious because index may try to retest its resistant regions again to confirm its reversal for a correction. For current trading session it's expected that index would try to bounce back from its major supportive region of 45,500pts therefore it's expected that buying with strict stop loss of 45,470pts could be beneficial for day trading, but breakout of 45,470pts in downward direction would call for 45,048pts. While on flip side index would face initial resistance at 46,300pts where its being capped by a strong horizontal resistant region but breakout above this region would call for 46,700pts where a strong horizontal resistance along with descending trend line would try to push index back in downward direction. Index have entered in lower band of its Bollinger band on daily chart after a squeezed formation therefore it can be expected that if it would succeed in maintaining below its resistant regions then a deeper correction could be witnessed in coming days.

Asian shares advanced to record highs on Monday as successful coronavirus vaccine rollouts globally raise hopes of a rapid economic recovery amid new fiscal aid from Washington, while oil prices rose on heightened tensions in the Middle East. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan jumped 0.4% to 736.4. Japan’s Nikkei climbed 1.1%, despite data showing the country’s recovery from its worst postwar recession slowed in the fourth quarter. Australia’s benchmark index added 0.9% while E-mini futures for the S&P 500 were up 0.3% in early Asian trading. China and Hong Kong markets are shut for the Lunar New Year holiday. U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday. The highlight of the week will probably be minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s January meeting, where policymakers decided to leave rates unchanged.Read More...

Federal Tax Ombudsman Mushtaq Ahmad Sukhera has directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to initiate and finalise proceedings against non-compliant withholding agents under section 161, where default is established in terms of Section 165 of the Ordinance. According to press statement issued here, he further directed FBR to register all the non-compliant withholding agents on the tax roll and to ensure submission of withholding statements in terms of Section 165 of the Ordinance. An own motion investigation was initiated to investigate the failure of FBR to monitor the Advance Tax to be collected at the time of sale, purchase or transfer/registration of immovable properties in terms of Section 236-C and 236-K of the Income Tax Ordinance , 2001.Read More...

The expansion of Pakistan’s e-commerce market and the substantial growth of its turnover are the result of the correct policies adopted by the Pakistani government led by PM Imran Khan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cheng Xizhong, Visiting Professor at Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Senior Fellow of the Charhar Institute said on Sunday. “In my point of view, the expansion of Pakistan’s e-commerce market and the substantial growth of its turnover are the result of the correct policies adopted by the Pakistani government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in an article published by China Economic Net (CEN). This is also closely related to the cooperation between Chinese e-commerce enterprises and local partners in Pakistan, and one of the main reasons why Pakistan’s economy had recovered so quickly, he added.Read More...

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended on February 11, for the combined consumption group, witnessed increase of 0.81 percent as compared to the previous week. The SPI for the week under review in the above mentioned group was recorded at 142.85 points against 141.70 points registered in the previous week, according to the latest data of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 9.17 percent. The weekly SPI with base year 2015-16=100 is covering 17 urban centers and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.Read More...

The government is likely to sublet unutilised and surplus capacity at existing Lique­fied Natural Gas terminals to cut LNG tariff and restrict their further expansion to give a clear signal to private parties for investments in commercial terminals. An inter-ministerial committee, led by Planning Commission’s deputy chairman Dr Jahanzeb Khan and also comprising secretaries of finance, petroleum and maritime affairs, appointed by the federal cabinet, arrived at this conclusion though it linked a final decision on the quantity of surplus or excess capacity and its viability to a technical study by an international consultant. Interestingly, the committee report to be taken up by cabinet committee on energy this week completely ignores one of the basic aspects of its creation — how to create LNG storage capacity and how it is ensured that terminal operators do not sell the same capacity twice.Read More...