Equities remain under pressure in November

Pakistan Stock Exchange, in a repeat of recent performance failed to hold onto mid-month gains, November closed with a muted gain as the benchmark index gained 2.6% increase in Rupee terns and paltry 1.2% in US$ terms.

Politics remains in flux, with PTI keeping up the pressure on the ruling coalition, while the economy - and the external account position in particular - remains vulnerable.

However, these top-down concerns are balanced against ultra-cheap valuations, with the market absorbing the surprise 100bps rate hike reasonably well and foreign investors turning net buyers in oil & gas exploration after a significant gap.

Analysts believe economic outlook takes precedence over political developments, with the former paramount in determining the near-term course of the KSE-100. The pending 9th IMF review is the key deriver.

Imran Khan had an eventful November, to say the least! He survived an assassination attempt, ended his march to Islamabad, and has threatened to dissolve the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assemblies. The overall calculus remains the same, to force early general elections but there is some change in tack, with the US no longer blamed for his ouster, and a less combative stance adopted towards the army in the run up to the appointment of the new army chief.

General Munir faces the tough task of regaining lost face for the army (in farewell speeches, his predecessor vowed the institution will be apolitical), while also focusing on preserving hard-fought security gains given the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has recently ended its ceasefire.

The major win in November for PML-N was the issuance of a diplomatic passport to Nawaz Sharif. His eventual return to Pakistan, subject to legal relief, cannot be ruled out.

The PML-N led ruling coalition is anticipated to complete its term in the center, but there is still a significant lack of clarity on political outlook.

Sustaining the IMF program remains critical. There is greater realization that Pakistan needs stability to put economy on track.

After no change in the preceding two monetary policies, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) raised the policy rate by 100bps to 16%, with high inflation and external account vulnerabilities outweighing weak GDP growth.

A return to prudent policymaking possibly signals the overarching importance of sustaining the ongoing IMF program but there are challenges – no date has been set for the 9th IMF review

 The PKR appears to have been kept in check by import controls and restrictions on the movement of foreign exchange and fear of a mini-budget to impose additional taxation may yet be in play to make up for flood-related losses.

There are positives, with the SBP Governor announcing Pakistan will repay its international Sukuk ahead of its scheduled December 05, 2022 maturity, as partial offsetting funding from the AIIB has already been secured.

However, with the import cover a shallow 1.5 months, analysts believe Pakistan not only needs to sustain the IMF program, but also fast-track the promised assistance from Saudi Arabia and China (debt rollover and additional financing). Potential measures such as a higher levy on diesel may be taken as leading indicators for the government’s will in keeping the IMF program on track.       

Analysts expect equities to respond more closely to the evolution of foreign exchange reserves in the near-term, rather than noisy politics which may already be in the price. Valuations are ultra-cheap backed by more companies announcing share buybacks, most recently BAFL, and mean reversion implies significant upside through the cycle.

MSCI changes are also generally positive, with LUCK, SYS, TRG and POL added to the FM100 Index effective end-November. For our top picks, we replace EFERT with ENGRO and PSO with APL. EFERT’s theme of a high dividend yield loses a little luster in the higher interest rate environment, while ENGRO offers a good blend of both yield and growth. With tough reforms appearing unlikely for now, including on the energy side, APL’s stronger fundamentals win out over cash-strapped PSO. 

 

Iran sentences four people to death for cooperating with Mossad

Four people were sentenced to death on Wednesday by Iran's judiciary for allegedly cooperating with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service and committing kidnappings, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

The Islamic Republic has long accused arch-enemy Israel of carrying out covert operations on its soil. Tehran has lately accused Israeli and Western intelligence services of plotting a civil war in the country, now gripped by some of the biggest anti-government protests since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Mehr named the four accused and, referring to Israel, said they were sentenced to death for the crime of cooperating with the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and for kidnapping.

It added, "With guidance from the Zionist intelligence service, this network of thugs was stealing and destroying private and public property, kidnapping people, and obtaining fake confessions."

Mehr said the accused had been arrested by the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence.

Three other people were handed prison sentences of between five and 10 years for allegedly committing crimes such as acting against national security, aiding in kidnapping, and possessing illegal weapons, it said.

Death of Jiang Zemin, end of an era

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who led the country for a decade of rapid economic growth after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, died on Wednesday at the age of 96, Chinese state media reported.

Jiang died in his home city of Shanghai just after noon on Wednesday of leukemia and multiple organ failure, Xinhua news agency said, publishing a letter to the Chinese people by the ruling Communist Party, parliament, Cabinet and the military.

"Comrade Jiang Zemin's death is an incalculable loss to our Party and our military and our people of all ethnic groups," the letter read, saying its announcement was with profound grief.

Jiang's death comes at a tumultuous time in China, where authorities are grappling with rare widespread street protests among residents fed up with heavy-handed COVID-19 curbs nearly three years into the pandemic.

The zero-COVID policy is a hallmark of President Xi Jinping, who recently secured a third leadership term that cements his place as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and has taken China in an increasingly authoritarian direction since replacing Jiang's immediate successor, Hu Jintao.

China is also in the midst of a sharp economic slowdown exacerbated by zero-COVID.

Numerous users of China's Twitter-like Weibo platform described the death of Jiang, who remained influential after finally retiring in 2004, as the end of an era.

"I'm very sad, not only for his departure, but also because I really feel that an era is over," a Henan province-based user wrote.

"As if what has happened wasn't enough, 2022 tells people in a more brutal way that an era is over," a Beijing Weibo user posted.

The online pages of state media sites including People's Daily and Xinhua turned to black and white in mourning.

Wednesday's letter described our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin as an outstanding leader of high prestige, a great Marxist, statesman, military strategist and diplomat and a long-tested communist fighter.

Jiang was plucked from obscurity to head China's ruling Communist Party after the bloody Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989, but broke the country out of its subsequent diplomatic isolation, mending fences with the United States and overseeing an unprecedented economic boom.

He served as president from 1993 to 2003 but held China's top job, as head of the ruling Communist Party, from 1989 and handed over that role to Hu in 2002. He only gave up the position as head of the military in 2004, which he also assumed in 1989.

When Jiang retired, it was said by sources close to the leadership at the time that everywhere Hu looked he would see the supporters of his predecessor.

Jiang had stacked China's most powerful leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee, with his own protégées, many of them from the so-called "Shanghai Gang".

But in the years after Jiang retired from his final post, the military commission chairmanship in 2004, Hu consolidated his grip, neutralized the Shanghai Gang and successfully anointed Xi as a successor.

 

Can Yuan Replace US Dollar?

Chinese entrepreneur Wang Min is delighted about Russia's embrace of the yuan. His LED lights company can price contracts to Russian customers in yuan rather than dollars or euros, and they can pay him in yuan. It's win-win, he says.

Wang's plans have been transformed by the conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Moscow that have shut Russia's banks and many of its companies out of the dollar and euro payment systems.

His contract manufacturing business with Russia has been small in the past, but now he's preparing to invest in warehousing there.

"We hope that next year sales in Russia can account for 10-15% of our total sales," said the businessman from China's southern coastal province of Guangdong, whose annual revenue of about US$20 million mainly comes from Africa and South America.

Wang is seeking to capitalize on a rapid "yuanization" of Russia's economy this year as the isolated country seeks financial security from Asian powerhouse China. He sees a win-win situation in Chinese exporters reducing their currency risks and payment becoming more convenient for Russian buyers.

While the yuan, or renminbi, has been making gradual inroads into Russia for years, the crawl has turned into a sprint in the past nine months as the currency has swept into the country's markets and trade flows, according to a Reuters review of data and interviews with 10 business and finance players.

Russia's financial shift eastwards could boost cross-border commerce, present a growing economic counterweight to the dollar and limit Western efforts to pressure Moscow by economic means.

Total transactions in the yuan-rouble pair on the Moscow Exchange ballooned to an average of almost 9 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) a day last month, exchange data analyzed by Reuters showed. Previously, they rarely exceeded 1 billion yuan in an entire week.

"What happened was that it became suddenly very risky and expensive to keep traditional currencies - dollar, euro, British pounds," said Andrei Akopian, Managing Director of Moscow-based investment firm Caderus Capital, citing the potential danger of a bank that keeps foreign currency deposits being sanctioned.

"Everybody was motivated and even pushed towards the rouble or other currencies including, and first of all, the renminbi."

Indeed, yuan-rouble trading totalled 185 billion yuan in October, more than 80 times the level seen in February when Russia launched what it refers to as a special military operation in Ukraine near the end of the month, according to exchange data.

The surge of interest has seen the yuan's share of the currency market jump to 40-45% from less than 1% at the start of the year, said Dmitry Piskulov, international projects head at the Moscow Exchange's foreign-exchange market department.

By comparison, the dollar/rouble pair, which commanded more than 80% of trading volumes on the Russian market in January, has seen its share drop to about 40% as of October, according to exchange data and the central bank.

Until April, Russia didn't even make the top 15 list of countries using the yuan outside mainland China, in terms of the value of inbound and outbound flows, according to data from global financial networking system SWIFT.

It has since jumped to No. 4, lagging only Hong Kong, the city's former colonial ruler Britain and Singapore.

To put this in a global context, though, the dollar and euro are still by far the dominant currencies, representing more than 42% and 35% of flows respectively as of September this year. The yuan has risen to almost 2.5% from below 2% two years earlier.

Wang's business optimism is echoed by Shen Muhui, who heads a trade group for small exporters to Russia in neighbouring Fujian province. He said more and more Russian buyers were opening yuan accounts and settling transactions directly in the Chinese currency, which he said was a big advantage.

"The Russia-Ukraine conflict has brought opportunities for Chinese businessman," said Shen, adding that his association had received many inquiries from Chinese companies interested in doing business in Russia.

It's not only Chinese companies, or small companies, joining the yuan train. Seven Russian corporate giants, including Rusal, Rosneft and Polyus, have raised a total of 42 billion yuan in bonds on the Russian market, according to Reuters calculations, and the list could grow with No.1 lender Sberbank and oil firm Gazpromneft saying they're also considering renminbi debt.

Aluminium producer Rusal, which buys raw materials from China and then sells a large chunk of its finished goods there, told Reuters it had stepped up the share of yuan used in those purchases and sales this year, and that the share would continue to rise, though it declined to provide a detailed breakdown.

While President Vladimir Putin has long sought to reduce Russia's reliance on the dollar, geopolitics has turbo-charged this trend in 2022.

China, the world's No. 2 economy, is the biggest global power not to join economic sanctions against Russia. Indeed, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping sealed a no limits partnership in February, weeks before Moscow launched what it describes as a "special military operation" in Ukraine.

The yuan comprised about 19% of Russia's trade settlements with China in 2021 versus the dollar's 49% share, Andrey Melnikov, deputy director at international cooperation department at the Russian central bank, said in September.

While 2022 figures haven't been published yet, the Chinese currency is gaining ground, according to Melnikov, who told a conference that demand for yuan liquidity had risen sharply due to reduced access to traditional payment methods and the freezing of its overseas gold and foreign exchange reserves.

The central bank declined to comment for this article.

Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina is tracking the growth, telling lawmakers this month that the influx of yuan illustrated a transformation of the currency composition of our economy.

Regulators are also aware of potential perils, such as a disparity between a growing number of yuan-held current accounts and deposits of the currency, with yuan-denominated lending only starting to develop.

The central bank has said lenders should seek to reduce the growing risks of yuanization of their balance sheets - or gaps between yuan assets and liabilities - by increasing payments in yuan for imports, investing in yuan-denominated securities or using yuan in trade transactions with other countries.

Regulators do not plan to limit yuan usage now and may encourage banks to use more by relaxing provisioning requirements for the currency while tightening them for dollars and euros, Elizaveta Danilova, director at the central bank's financial stability department, told a conference this month.

Tehreek-e-Taliban ends ceasefire with Government of Pakistan

Reportedly, the armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has announced the end of an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the Government of Pakistan in June 2022 and issued orders to its fighters to carry out attacks across the country.

“As military operations are ongoing against mujahideen in different areas, … so it is imperative for you to carry out attacks wherever you can in the entire country,” the group said in a statement on Monday.

The group said it is facing a rising number of attacks by the Pakistani military, particularly in the Lakki Marwat district of Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“We submit to the people of Pakistan that we have repeatedly warned you and continued to be patient so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged at least by us, but the army and intelligence agencies do not stop and continue the attacks, so now our retaliatory attacks will also start across the country,” the statement said.

The TTP has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade. The group demands the imposition of hardline Islamic law, release of key members arrested by the government and a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

On November 16, the TTP claimed responsibility for an attack on a police patrol in Lakki Marwat, about 200km (125 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Peshawar. Six policemen were killed.

The TTP made its declaration hours after the government said the state minister for foreign affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, will visit Afghanistan on Tuesday.

According to the foreign ministry, Khar will hold talks on regional security with the Taliban government in Kabul.

Security specialist Asfandyar Mir of the United States Institute of Peace told Al Jazeera that while the TTP has been escalating its violence recently, it has also exercised restraint by not carrying out attacks outside tribal areas.

“I have inferred the targeting as a function of Afghan Taliban pressure on the TTP to calibrate their escalation,” he saId. “Now if the TTP follows through in its declaration of countrywide attacks, the key question is how will the Taliban respond.”

The government and the TTP have held multiple rounds of talks facilitated by the Afghan Taliban, the last of which took place in June. The talks began weeks after the Taliban took control of Kabul last year.

Despite the ceasefire, the TTP continued its attacks this year, saying they were defensive in nature and only in retaliation for operations carried out by Pakistan’s military.

According to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based research organization, at least 65 such attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the end of October. These killed at least 98 people and wounded 75, it said.

 

Iran publishes list of sensitive sites in Israel

Under the guise of reporting on reports by Beirut-based Al Mayadeen, a pan-Arabist satellite news channel, media outlets close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have published a list of “sensitive” sites that could be targeted in a future war. The reports listed a number of buildings and sites in Israel in what was clearly intended as a threat, reported The Jerusalem Post.

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency on Monday reported, “In this regard, Al Mayadeen network has published a report on the analysis of Israel’s target bank and the sensitive positions of this regime that can be targeted in any war. At the beginning of this report, the general situation of the Zionist regime at the military level and its equipment has been examined.”

The article included a list of sites in Israel, such as the Knesset, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry. It included what Tasnim characterized as nuclear sites and facilities. In the list of warehouses and facilities, the report included a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems site in Haifa, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The report also examined airports and military and intelligence bases. It mentioned civilian airports, such as Ben-Gurion Airport and Ramon Airport near Eilat. A list of military bases followed.

This appears to be one of the few times that Iranian media close to the regime have so openly published what it claims is a list of Israeli sites that could be targeted in a future war. This appears to point to Iran and its proxies’ estimates of their targeting ability.

In the last conflict with Hamas, the terrorist group claimed to have targeted Ramon Airport. Operations at the airport were briefly suspended during that conflict. Hamas also appeared to target other sites that have infrastructure, using large-scale salvos of rockets to try to overwhelm the Iron Dome air-defense system.

Hezbollah has also made threats regarding targeting Israel’s infrastructure, including threatening gas rigs off the coast and industrial sites near Haifa.

The overall context of Iran can be seen as merely bragging and threatening. But it also illustrates the shift in thinking in Tehran and among Iran’s proxy groups. The proxies include Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen and members of Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq.

Recent reports that an Iranian IRGC member linked to Iran’s drone program was killed in Syria, and that Iran wants to move air-defense systems to Syria, show Iran’s possible concerns regarding these latest tensions and threats.

Publishing the kind of list that Iran’s pro-regime media published on Monday, listing sites that Iran thinks are sensitive, can be seen as a message to Israel.

It can also be seen as illustrating that Tehran believes the conflict with Israel is entering a strategic stage in which Iran would like to supply proxy groups in Lebanon and Syria with more advanced weapons, including drones and precision-guided munitions that can target the sites Al Mayadeen listed.

Iran has increased its drone threats against Israel in recent years, and Tehran works closely with Hamas and Hezbollah to try to learn from past conflicts and tensions with Israel.

 

 

 

Israelis being shunned at Qatar World Cup

According to a report by The Jerusalem Post, multiple Israelis have claimed to have been met by an atmosphere of hostility and hatred at the World Cup in Qatar, with fans refusing to speak to Israeli journalists, waving Palestinian flags in the background of their videos and yelling at them.

Moav Vardy, KAN’s foreign affairs reporter was yelled at by a Saudi fan who told him, “You are not welcome here. This is Qatar. This is our country. There is only Palestine; no Israel.”

Other videos from Qatar show people immediately walking away when they find out the person interviewing them is Israeli.

In one particular video, N12’s Ohad Hemo begins to interview a group of Lebanese men who then walk away when Hemo tells them he’s Israeli. One of them then turns back and asks Hemo what he’s doing there and then tells him that Israel doesn’t exist.

In other videos, people stand behind various Israeli reporters and raise Palestinian flags.

Israeli soccer legend and KAN World Cup panel member Eli Ohana also faced anti-Israel sentiments when he was on a golf cart being driven by a Qatari policeman. When Ohana said he is Israeli, the officer asked him if he was joking, and Ohana then said he was really Portuguese in order to avoid trouble.

The officer told him that if he had been Israeli, he would have turned the car around and refused to drive him.

Raz Shechnick, Yediot Ahronoth’s reporter for the World Cup, wrote on Twitter about his experiences in Qatar, describing an atmosphere of rejection and hostility from both locals and foreigners attending the games.

“We didn’t want to write these words, we are not the story here. But after 10 days in Doha, we cannot hide what we are going through. We are feeling hated, surrounded by hostility, not welcomed,” the journalist wrote.

He also described an incident in which he and his colleague had lied about their country of origin, saying they were Ecuadorian in order to prevent them from being harassed by fans.

Israeli journalist Dor Hoffman reported that a Qatari taxi driver kicked him out of his cab when he discovered he was Israeli, refusing to take his money.

He later continued to a restaurant on a beach, where he was escorted out of the restaurant by security, with the owner demanding that he delete every photo taken in his restaurant. Hoffman said the owner took his phone and that he felt threatened.

On Saturday, Tunisian fans waved a banner saying “Free Palestine,” despite Qatar and FIFA’s policy of not allowing political protests at matches, a policy that led to the confiscation of rainbow-colored items in support of the LGBTQ community and Iranian anti-regime signs.

Jerusalem resident Michael Janekowitz, a former spokesman for the Jewish Agency who is attending the World Cup, refuted the claims that Israelis were being targeted, and said his experience has been without incident.

“Qatar is very welcoming to the Israeli visitors,” he said.

These Israeli journalists are going with magnifying glasses to find haters of Israel. Most of these Israel-bashers have come to the World Cup from outside of Qatar. They are being provoked by headline-seeking Israeli journalists.

“Qatar has a population of about 3.3 million of whom only 300,000 are Qataris. The other 3 million are mostly workers from mainly India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines and Sudan,” he added, saying that was where the antagonism against Israelis was emanating from.