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PSX Off-Market Block Deals (NDM) — What Big Negotiated Trades Actually Predict
By ZEME AI Research Team · July 8, 2026 · 9 min read
Most PSX tools show you on-exchange volume and stop there. But a meaningful share of real trading activity in Pakistan never touches the open order book at all — it happens through NDM, the Negotiated Deal Market, where large blocks of shares change hands off-market at a privately agreed price. We built a tracker for this data across every listed company, then asked the obvious question: does a big off-market print tell you anything about where the price is headed?
We tested it properly — not on a handful of examples, but across every qualifying case in our dataset. The answer surprised us, and it's more useful than a simple "buy" or "sell" signal.
The headline finding: across 21 cases where a single-day off-market print was worth 5% or more of a company's entire market capitalization, 67% were followed by a price decline over the next 60 trading sessions. But the minority that went up went up a lot — which is the real lesson here.
What NDM Actually Is
NDM trades are disclosed publicly by PSX, but they settle at whatever price the two parties agreed to privately — which can be meaningfully different from that day's market price. That gap is itself informative: a deal struck well above the market price often signals a change-of-control or sponsor transaction where the buyer paid a premium for a strategic stake, not a price the open market is necessarily prepared to sustain.
The Test — 21 Real Cases, Not Cherry-Picked Examples
We flagged every stock with a single-day off-market print worth 5% or more of its market capitalization, then measured the price 60 trading sessions later.
Notice the tension in those two middle numbers: two-thirds of cases lost money, yet the average return was positive. That's not a contradiction — it means the losses tend to be moderate while the occasional win is large. This is a volatility signal, not a clean directional one.
| Symbol | Deal Size vs Market Cap | 60-Day Forward Return |
|---|
| SAIF | 5.6% | +87.0% |
| FML | 5.6% | +72.9% |
| PSEL | 43.0% | +40.3% |
| REWM | 5.1% | +40.6% |
| WAVES | 9.3% | +16.9% |
| PKGP | 7.7% | −34.1% |
| EPQL | 18.9% | −22.1% |
| DSL | 9.3% | −17.5% |
| PIOC | 96.8% | −11.5% |
Methodology: for every PSX symbol with off-market (NDM) activity, we identified the single trading date with the largest off-market value, filtered to cases where that value was ≥5% of the company's current market capitalization, and compared the closing price on that date to the closing price 60 trading sessions later. Full dataset spans roughly 15 months, the maximum history publicly available from PSX's own NDM disclosure.
Case Study: The Rs62.9 Billion Day
PIOC — a single-day print worth 97% of the entire company
On one trading day, PIOC saw 131.9 million shares change hands off-market — a Rs62.9 billion transaction at Rs415.71 per share, effectively the company's whole market cap trading hands in one session. That's the signature of a change-of-control or major sponsor transaction, not routine trading. In the months that followed, the price never held that level — it drifted down toward Rs215–225 before only partially recovering. The lesson: a deal that size, done at a premium, doesn't automatically mean the market agrees with that valuation going forward.
Why This Happens
A few dynamics explain the pattern:
- Control transactions get priced for control, not for the open market. A buyer acquiring a strategic stake will often pay above the prevailing price — a premium the broader market isn't obligated to validate afterward.
- Large negotiated exits can signal insider caution. A sponsor or associated company reducing a large position off-market, quietly, is sometimes information the price hasn't caught up to yet.
- The wins are real, not noise. Cases like SAIF and FML show off-market activity can also precede genuine re-ratings — which is exactly why this is a "pay closer attention" signal, not an automatic sell trigger.
How to actually use this: treat a large off-market print as a flag to look deeper — check the deal's price relative to the market, check who's likely on either side, check whether it lines up with other signals (operator phase, fair value, institutional flow) — not as a standalone buy or sell signal on its own.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NDM (Negotiated Deal Market) on PSX?
NDM is PSX's off-market trading mechanism for negotiated block deals — large share transactions agreed directly between two parties rather than matched on the open order book, publicly disclosed by PSX but settled at a separately negotiated price.
Does a large off-market block deal mean a stock will go up?
No. Across 21 tested cases where a single-day deal was worth 5%+ of market cap, 67% were followed by a loss over the next 60 sessions. It's better read as a signal of upcoming volatility than a directional buy or sell trigger.
How much PSX trading happens off-market via NDM?
It varies enormously by stock — some companies have seen off-market turnover exceed 90% of their entire market cap over 15 months, while most stocks have little to no off-market activity at all.
Where can I see NDM data for a specific stock?
ZEME AI shows 5-day rolling off-market value and trade count on every stock's analysis page, plus a market-wide off-market activity panel on the Heat Map.
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