Who is an investor?

A person whose principal concern in the purchase of a security is the minimizing of risk, compared to the speculator who is prepared to accept calculated risk in the hope of making better-than-average profits, or the "gambler" who is prepared to take even greater risks. More generally it refers to people who invest money in investment products.

What are Odd Lots?

An Odd Lot can be best defined as an irregular number of shares, which cannot be traded in the regular market timings of the Karachi Stock Exchange. Since many investors acquire odd lots and as a result are unable to trade these odd lots in the regular market, the Karachi Stock Exchange has initiated a separate ODD Lots market that is open daily Mon - Fri. during the following timings:

Mon-Thurs. 12:15 pm - 1:45 pm
Friday 10:45 am - 11:45 am

KASB Direct helps the clients clients to complete or sqaure through its helpline or email.

What is Provisional Trading?

Provisional Trading refers to the trading activity that takes place between the time a scrip is formally listed at the Stock Exchange and after it's Initial Public Offering(IPO) has taken place and the subscriptions have been received from the prospective shareholders. During this time trading activity takes place under an informal mechanism before the settlement date of the subscription where all shareholders have to settle their positions with the Stock Exchange against their holdings in the scrip. Provisional Trading helps gauge for the investors the demand and supply situation of the scrip before formal trading starts at the Stock Exchange. The settlement procedure during the provisional trading period is similar to the settlement of Futures Contracts.

What is Market Lot?

A Market Lot is an acceptable 'number of shares' that an investor can buy or sell during the regular market hours at the Karachi Stock Exchange. The number of shares in every scrip differs e.g. the tradable lot of PIAA is 500 shares, for POL is 100 shares, and for Unilever is 10 shares.

What is your margin requirement?

You must keep at-least 30% margin against your outstanding exposure for the purpose of trading in your account. This margin may be kept in the form of 50% cash and 50% securities (at the reduced value).

What is the difference between Delivery Versus Payment (DVP) and Margin Trading?

Delivery Versus Payment refers to where stocks are purchased and marked for delivery with the total value of the trade deducted from the Customer's account thus reducing the corresponding cash balance in his/her account. In this manner he/she can only purchase and sell stocks that are less than or equal to the amount of cash deposited by him.

Margin trading is used to provide clients with additional funds as a multiple of their cash deposited. If a client places the basic account opening requirement of Rs.100,000, he/she is provided a trading limit that is 100/30 or approx 3.33 times the amount i.e. Rs.333,000. The margin amount is calculated as 30% of the trading limit.

What is Equity?

Equity is the ownership of shares in a corporation in the form of common stock or preferred stock. It also refers to total assets minus total liabilities, in which case it is also referred to as shareholder's equity or net worth or book value.

What are Stop Loss Orders?

Stop Loss trading is a form used to prevent unusual and large amount of losses. It allows the client to place a rate below current market price if there is a drop expected. In this manner, a client can minimize losses by placing a rate as maximum loss.

What does 'Earning per Share' mean?

Net income divided by common shares outstanding. A company that earns Rs.1 million for the year and has a million shares outstanding has an EPS of Rs.1. This EPS figure, which represents how much of earnings each share is entitled to, is important as the basis for various calculations an investor might make in assessing whether a stock is expensive. The most widely used indicator of whether a stock is over- or undervalued, for example, is the price/earnings (P/E) ratio, which relates share price to earnings per share.

What is a Margin Call?

Margin call can be simply explained as a message sent to the client when his/her margin deposit falls below 30% of his exposure. Margin calls are sent to client via email.