Bears tighten grip on LSE

A bearish trend gripped the Lahore Stock Exchange on Tuesday where equities recorded losses amid an ascending transaction volume under the lead of oil sector shares. The LSE-25 index fell by 4676.39 against 4727.59 of Monday while trading turnover increased to 22.470 million shares as compared to 19.400 million shares traded a day earlier.
Bosicor Pakistan, Bank Alfalah, NIB Bank, Arif Habib Securities, Askari Commercial Bank and Pakistan Cement Company helped avert more declines while Pakistan Oil Field, Attock Refinery, National Refinery, PSO, OGDC, MCB Bank, PPL, and Adamjee Insurance remained under pressure.
The market opened on a depressed note and remained in red zone in the entire day's trading. However, it recovered its position because of buying on dip and stayed in green zone for a short while but failed to sustain because of selling pressure.
News of levy of capital gain tax on banks' profitability had already disturbed the market sentiments on Monday. Tuesday's opening was also continuation of the day earlier sentiments, said Syed Muhammad Ishaq of the Abbasi and Company.
He said the market had shown a lackluster trend in the past two days while the market giants also failed to perform well. "Investors' interest appeared to be changed and as a result buying was seen in the sidelines items instead of blue chips." He said minor dip and simultaneous recovery was a good sign for the market future. Despite the bearish trend, the market maintained the level of 14500.
Another factor keeping the market in negative zone was offloading by the big players. The potential investors have offloaded their holdings to get out of the market before Eid holidays begin. However, the market witnessed a good change, particularly after lifting the emergency in the country, which can be evident from the increasing figure of special convertible rupee account.
Declining stocks were ahead of advancing ones as out of a total of 115 active issues, 25 companies registered gains, 42 went down, while 48 stayed glued to their previous level.
Among gainers, First Capital Equities improved by Rs 2.40, Pervez Ahmad Securities gained Rs 2.30, D.S. Industries appreciated Rs 1.35 while Bank Alfalah was up by Rs 1.10.
In the minus column, Pakistan Oil Field lost Rs 4.20, PSO declined by Rs 4.00, National Refinery shed Rs 3.65, while Attock Refinery and OGDC were down by Rs 3.55 and Rs 3.15. Bosicor Pakistan was the market leader whose 7.876 million shares changed hands followed by Bank Alfalah with total trading of 2.489 million shares.