Glossary

Every metric this site shows you, defined in plain English. Each entry also says what the metric cannot tell you — which is usually the more useful half, and the half most sites leave out.

69 terms in 7 topics · every term has its own link

Market 21

Prices, indices and how trading on the PSX works.

52-week range#: The highest and lowest price over the past year. It gives quick context for where today's price sits, but a stock near its 52-week low is not automatically cheap — a falling business makes new lows all the way down.
Change and percentage change#: How far the price has moved from the previous session's close, in rupees and as a percentage. The percentage is the comparable figure: a Rs 5 move is large for a Rs 20 share and trivial for a Rs 1,500 one. On an ex-date the price usually falls by about the payout, which is the dividend leaving the share, not a loss.
Circuit breaker#: The PSX limits how far an individual stock may move in one session (historically 7.5% or Rs 1, whichever is higher, with wider bands for some securities). A stock "locked at upper circuit" has hit the cap and trading is effectively one-sided. This is a structural feature of Pakistani markets with no US equivalent for ordinary stocks.
Free float#: The portion of a company's shares actually available for public trading, excluding blocks held by sponsors, the government, or strategic investors. On the PSX free float matters a great deal: many listings have a small float, which means thin volume, wider spreads, and prices that jump on modest orders.
Index weight#: Each company's share of an index, which decides how much its price move shifts the index. PSX indices weight companies by free-float market capitalisation — only the shares available to trade count — and some cap any one company's weight. The weights on this site are estimated from full market capitalisation, so they show the order of magnitude correctly but will differ somewhat from the exchange's official figures.
KMI-30 Index#: The KSE-Meezan Index: 30 Shariah-compliant PSX companies, weighted by free-float market capitalisation with a cap on any single stock's weight. Membership depends on each company passing the Shariah screens and is reviewed periodically, so companies enter and leave. It is the main benchmark for Islamic equity investors and funds in Pakistan.
KSE-30 Index#: An index of 30 of the largest and most actively traded PSX companies, weighted by free-float market capitalisation. Because it screens for liquidity as well as size, it is a tighter, more tradable benchmark than the KSE-100, and more concentrated in the biggest names — so a few heavyweights move it even more.
KSE-100 Index#: The benchmark index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange. It tracks 100 companies chosen to represent the largest company by market capitalisation in each sector, plus the next largest companies overall. It is capitalisation-weighted, so a move in a giant like OGDC shifts the index far more than an equal percentage move in a small listing. When Pakistani media say "the market rose 400 points", they almost always mean the KSE-100.
KSE All Share Index#: An index of every company listed on the PSX — the broadest measure of the market. It includes the small and thinly traded names the KSE-100 leaves out, which is why it can tell a different story from the headline index on days when small companies and the giants move apart.
Market breadth#: How many stocks rose (advancers) against how many fell (decliners) in a session. It tells you how widespread a move was: an index that rises while most stocks fall is being carried by a handful of heavyweights, which is a narrower rally than the headline number suggests.
Open, high, low and close#: The four prices that summarise a session: the first trade (open), the highest and lowest prices traded (high and low — together, the day's range) and the official last price (close). The close is the reference point: the day's change is measured from the previous close, and most indicators on this site are calculated from closing prices.
Points contributed#: An estimate of how many index points one company added or removed in a session: its index weight, times its percentage price change, times the index's previous close. It explains days when the KSE-100 rises while most of its members fall — a few heavyweights can carry the whole index. The figure is our estimate from market-cap weights, not the exchange's own attribution.
Rebased to 100#: A way to compare things priced on different scales. Every line is divided by its own first value and multiplied by 100, so they all start at 100 and a reading of 112 means up 12% since the start. It is the only fair way to put a Rs 40 share and a Rs 400 share, or a stock and an index, on one chart: the gaps between the lines are differences in return, not in price.
Record close#: The highest or lowest closing value in the history this site holds, with the date it was set. Closing values are used rather than intraday highs and lows because the close is the official price of each session. Our stored history does not always reach back as far as the exchange's own, so an "all-time" record quoted elsewhere can be older or different.
Sector#: The industry group a listed company is classified in — commercial banks, cement, fertiliser, oil & gas exploration and so on. Companies in one sector share the same drivers (interest rates for banks, construction demand and fuel costs for cement, gas prices for fertiliser), so compare valuations within a sector rather than across the whole market.
Sector move#: How a sector did today, shown as the average price change across its listed companies. An average can be pulled by one or two big movers, so read it next to the sector's breadth — how many of its companies actually rose and how many fell — before concluding the whole industry moved.
Share of the market#: A sector's combined market capitalisation as a percentage of the total for every listed company this site tracks. It shows where the exchange's value is concentrated — on the PSX a handful of sectors such as banks, oil and gas and fertiliser hold a large share — and so which industries move the broad indices most.
Shariah-compliant#: A stock that passes the screens used to build Islamic indices such as the KMI-30: its core business must be permissible, and its interest-bearing debt, interest-earning assets and non-compliant income must stay within set limits. Compliance is a status, not a permanent property — it is reviewed periodically and a company can lose it.
Trailing returns#: The change over fixed windows that end today — one week, one month, three months, a year and so on — each measured from the last close on or before the window's start. They show whether a move is recent or long-running. Each window moves forward every day, so a single big day can enter or drop out of a figure and change it sharply. A window the stored history does not reach is left blank rather than shown as zero.
Volume and turnover#: Volume is the number of shares traded; turnover is the rupee value of that trading. Volume confirms conviction: a breakout on heavy volume is more credible than the same move on a quiet day. On the PSX, low-volume small caps can be genuinely hard to exit at the quoted price.
Year to date (YTD)#: The change from the last close of the previous calendar year to the latest close. It resets to zero every January, so early in the year it covers only a few weeks and says little; compare it with the same point in other years rather than with a full year's return.

Fundamentals 4

What the business earns and what it is worth.

EPS (Earnings per share)#: Net profit divided by shares outstanding — the company's earnings attributable to one share. Rising EPS over several years is the cleanest evidence a business is genuinely growing. Beware one-off gains (asset sales, currency revaluation) that inflate a single year's EPS without reflecting the underlying business.
Fundamental score#: A 0–100 summary of a company's reported valuation and quality figures — how its price compares with its earnings and assets, and how profitably it uses its capital — where 50 is neutral. A single number is convenient for screening, but it hides which figure is driving it and inherits every gap in the underlying data. Treat it as a pointer to the figures, never a replacement for reading them.
Market capitalisation#: Share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding — what the market says the whole company is worth. It matters more than the share price alone: a Rs 20 share is not "cheaper" than a Rs 2,000 share, because the two companies may have wildly different share counts. Use market cap, not price, when comparing two businesses.
ROE (Return on equity)#: Net profit as a percentage of shareholders' equity — how efficiently management converts the owners' capital into profit. Consistently high ROE without heavy debt is one of the strongest signs of a durable business.

Valuation 6

What you pay for those earnings and dividends.

Book value and P/B#: Book value is assets minus liabilities — the accounting net worth per share. Price-to-book compares the market price to that figure. P/B below 1 means the market values the company at less than its stated net assets, common on the PSX for banks and holding companies, and it is a signal to investigate rather than an automatic bargain.
Dividend yield#: Annual dividend per share divided by share price, as a percentage. Dividend yields are a major reason Pakistani investors hold equities, particularly in fertiliser, banking and energy names. A very high yield is often a warning: it usually means the price has fallen sharply, and the dividend may be cut next.
DPS (Dividend per share)#: The cash dividend paid on each share, in rupees. PSX companies usually announce dividends as a percentage of face value, not of the market price: a 50% cash dividend on a share with a Rs 10 face value is Rs 5 per share. Divide a year's DPS by the share price to get the dividend yield.
Median dividend yield#: The middle dividend yield among a sector's dividend payers. Companies that paid nothing are left out, so it describes what a typical payer in the sector returns in cash — not the sector as a whole, and not a promise that any company will keep paying.
Median P/E#: The middle P/E ratio among a sector's profitable companies: half trade on a lower multiple, half on a higher one. Unlike an average, one company on an extreme P/E cannot drag it, which makes it a better "typical" figure to compare a single stock against. Loss-making companies have no meaningful P/E and are left out, and the figure is shown only where enough companies report one.
P/E ratio (Price-to-earnings)#: Share price divided by EPS — how many rupees you pay for one rupee of annual earnings. A low P/E can mean a bargain or a business the market expects to shrink; a high P/E can mean quality or hype. P/E is only meaningful against a peer in the same sector: Pakistani banks and cement companies simply do not trade at comparable multiples.

Technical 6

Indicators calculated from price and volume.

ADX (Average Directional Index)#: Measures trend strength from 0 to 100 without saying which direction. Below roughly 20 the market is ranging and trend-following signals tend to misfire; above 25 a real trend is present. ADX is best read alongside a directional indicator, never alone.
Bollinger Bands#: A moving average with bands drawn two standard deviations above and below. The bands widen when volatility rises and contract when it falls. Price touching the upper band means it is statistically extended, not that it must reverse.
MACD#: Moving Average Convergence Divergence. It subtracts the 26-day exponential moving average from the 12-day, then plots a 9-day signal line on top. The histogram is the gap between the two. When the histogram flips positive, short-term momentum has turned up relative to the medium term. It lags by construction, and produces frequent false signals in sideways markets.
Moving average (SMA/EMA)#: The average closing price over a set window, redrawn each day. The 50-day and 200-day averages are the most watched. Price above a rising 50-day average is a common definition of an uptrend. Moving averages describe what has already happened — they do not predict.
RSI (Relative Strength Index)#: A momentum oscillator from 0 to 100 measuring the speed and size of recent price moves, conventionally over 14 days. Readings above 70 are called overbought and below 30 oversold. Critically, these are not buy and sell instructions: in a strong trend RSI can sit above 70 for weeks while the price keeps climbing. It is most useful for spotting divergence, where price makes a new high but RSI does not.
Support and resistance#: Price levels where buying (support) or selling (resistance) has repeatedly stopped a move in the past. They are zones read from history, not lines the price must respect: a level that held three times can break on the fourth, and once broken a support level often becomes resistance.

Risk 2

How far and how unpredictably a price moves.

Beta#: How much a stock moves relative to the wider index. Beta of 1 moves with the market; above 1 amplifies it; below 1 dampens it. Beta measures co-movement, not quality, and it is unstable — a stock's beta this year may not hold next year.
Volatility#: The dispersion of returns, usually the annualised standard deviation. Higher volatility means a wider range of plausible outcomes in both directions. It is a measure of uncertainty, not of loss.

Method 10

How forecasts — including ours — are made and judged.

AI signal#: Our model's directional output for a stock over its ten-trading-session horizon, shown as Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell or Strong Sell. It comes from a logistic-regression model reading trend, momentum, valuation and volatility inputs. It is an automated estimate of direction — not investment advice, and not a judgement on whether a stock suits you.
Backtest#: Running a strategy or model against historical data to see how it would have performed. Backtests flatter almost every strategy, because the rules were chosen knowing what happened. Treat any backtested figure — including ours — as an upper bound, not an expectation.
Calibration#: Whether a model's stated confidence matches how often it is actually right. In a well-calibrated model, calls made at 60% confidence come true about 60% of the time, and higher-confidence calls do better than lower ones. A model can have a reasonable overall hit rate and still be poorly calibrated, which makes its confidence figures misleading.
Confidence#: How strongly the model leans toward the side it took, starting from 50% — no lean at all, a coin flip. It is the model's own claim, not a measured probability of being right; the calibration table on the model performance page checks whether higher-confidence calls actually come true more often. Read a figure just above 50% as a weak lean.
Hit rate and baseline#: Hit rate is the share of directional calls that turned out right. On its own it means little: if prices rose in 58% of the periods measured, always answering "up" scores 58% with no skill at all. That always-the-commoner-answer score is the baseline, and the gap between a model's hit rate and it is the figure worth reading.
Model score#: The model's overall reading of a stock on a 0–100 scale, where 50 means its inputs are balanced and the model leans neither way. Higher means trend, momentum and the other inputs lean more positive, lower more negative. It is a summary of what the data shows today, recalculated after each session — an automated estimate, not a recommendation and not a probability of the price rising.
Out-of-sample accuracy#: Accuracy measured on data a model was not trained on — history deliberately held back during training, or calls graded after they were published. It is the only accuracy figure worth reading, because accuracy on the training data mostly measures how well the model memorised the past. Expect it to be lower, and treat even it as an estimate rather than a promise.
Overfitting#: When a model learns the noise in its training data rather than a real pattern. It scores brilliantly on history and fails on new data. It is the single most common reason a promising trading model disappoints in live use, and the main reason we publish our out-of-sample accuracy rather than our backtest.
Stop level#: A price at which the forecast's case is considered broken — the level to reassess or exit to limit a loss. It is set from recent volatility so that ordinary daily noise does not trigger it. A stop is a trigger, not a floor: a gap, or a stock locked at its lower circuit, can carry the price straight past it.
Target price#: The price implied by a forecast's expected move at the end of its horizon. On this site it is scaled by the stock's recent volatility (its average true range), so it shows the size of a typical move in the direction of the call. It is a point estimate with wide uncertainty, not a promise or a price the stock is due to reach.

Mechanics 20

Accounts, settlement, corporate actions, funds and tax.

AUM (Assets under management)#: The total rupee value a fund, or a fund manager, looks after. Size alone says nothing about returns, but very small funds tend to carry higher costs per unit, and a fund whose assets swing sharply may be forced to buy or sell at awkward moments.
Benchmark#: The yardstick a fund measures itself against, stated in its offering document: a stock index such as the KSE-100 or KMI-30 for equity funds, and deposit, KIBOR or Treasury-bill rates for money market and income funds. A fund that trails its benchmark after fees, year after year, is charging you for doing worse than the market it invests in. Compare a fund only with the benchmark for its own category.
Bonus shares#: Free shares issued to existing shareholders out of the company's reserves — a 10% bonus is one new share for every ten held. The share price adjusts down in proportion, so your holding is worth the same on the day: a bonus divides the company into more pieces, it does not make it bigger.
Book closure#: The period when a company closes its share register to work out who is entitled to a dividend, bonus or right. Because PSX trades settle two business days after execution (T+2), a purchase has to be made before the ex-date for the shares to be in your account when the books close.
CDC account#: The Central Depository Company holds Pakistani shares in electronic form. Your broker maintains your sub-account, and CDC's IAS service lets you verify your holdings independently of your broker's statement — worth doing periodically.
CGT (Capital gains tax)#: Tax on the profit from selling shares or fund units. For listed shares NCCPL calculates it and collects it through your broker, and for mutual funds the fund deducts it when you redeem, so most investors never compute it themselves. The rate depends on when you bought, how long you held and your filer status, and the Finance Act changes it, so check the current year's rates.
Cost basis#: What you actually paid for a holding, including brokerage, commission and the taxes and charges on the purchase, usually shown as an average price per share. It is the starting point for your profit and loss and for capital gains tax; leaving the fees out makes every gain look bigger than it was.
Dividend withholding tax (WHT)#: Income tax deducted at source from a cash dividend: the company pays the tax to FBR and credits you the remainder, so the dividend that reaches your bank or CDC account is the net figure. The rate depends on your filer status (non-filers pay more) and on the kind of company paying, and it is set each year in the Finance Act. For most individual investors this deduction is the final tax on the dividend, but check the current year's rules.
Ex-date#: The first day a share trades without its latest dividend, bonus or right. To receive the entitlement you must buy before the ex-date; a buyer on or after it does not get it. The price usually drops by roughly the value of the payout that day, so buying just before the ex-date to "catch" a dividend gains nothing by itself.
Expense ratio (TER)#: A fund's yearly running costs — management fee, taxes, trustee and other charges — as a percentage of its assets, deducted from the NAV rather than billed to you. In Pakistan it is reported as the Total Expense Ratio. It is charged whatever the fund returns, so among funds in the same category a lower TER leaves more for you.
Filer and non-filer#: A filer is a person on FBR's Active Taxpayers List (ATL). Non-filers pay higher withholding tax on dividends, capital gains and many banking and property transactions, so being on the list directly raises an investor's net return. Staying on it depends on filing your income tax return on time.
Fund category#: The SECP classification that sets what a mutual fund may invest in — equity, income, money market, balanced or asset allocation, Shariah-compliant versions of each, and others. The category decides the risk you are taking, so compare returns and fees only within one category: a money market fund and an equity fund are not doing the same job.
NAV (Net asset value)#: The value of everything a mutual fund holds minus what it owes, divided by the units in issue — the price of one unit. Funds publish it for every dealing day, and you buy or redeem at that NAV, adjusted for any sales load. A high NAV does not make a fund expensive: compare returns, not unit prices.
Right issue#: An offer to existing shareholders to buy newly issued shares, usually at a discount to the market price, in proportion to what they already hold. You can subscribe, sell the right (on the PSX it usually trades under its own symbol for a short period) or let it lapse — and doing nothing dilutes your share of the company.
Risk profile#: The level of risk a mutual fund discloses, from low (money market funds, which hold short-term government paper and bank deposits) to high (equity funds), along with whether your principal can fall. It is set by what the fund is allowed to invest in, not by recent returns. It tells you how far the NAV can swing in a bad year — not how much the fund will earn — so match it to how long you can leave the money alone.
Sales load#: A one-off charge on buying (front-end load) or redeeming (back-end or contingent load) mutual fund units, quoted as a percentage of the amount. It is separate from the expense ratio, which is charged every year: a 2% front-end load means Rs 98 of every Rs 100 is actually invested. Many funds waive the load for online or larger investments, so ask before you buy.
T+2 settlement#: Trades on the PSX settle two business days after execution. Shares and cash change hands on T+2, which affects when sale proceeds are actually available to withdraw.
Time-weighted return (TWR)#: A portfolio return that strips out the effect of money moving in and out. The period is cut at every deposit and withdrawal, the return of each piece is measured on its own, and the pieces are chained together. Because your own cash timing no longer counts, it is the figure that answers "how did my investments do?" — and the one to compare with the KSE-100 or a mutual fund, which report returns the same way. It says nothing about whether you added money at a good or a bad moment; XIRR does.
Unrealised P&L#: The paper profit or loss on positions you still hold: what they are worth now minus what they cost. It moves every day with the price and becomes realised — and taxable — only when you sell. A large unrealised gain is not money yet.
XIRR (Money-weighted return)#: The single yearly rate that makes every deposit, withdrawal and today's value add up — the internal rate of return for cash flows on irregular dates. Unlike the time-weighted return it rewards adding money before a rise and penalises adding it before a fall, so it is your personal experience of the portfolio. Over periods shorter than a year the annualised figure swings wildly: a 5% gain in two months reads as more than 30% a year.

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