KARACHI: A bearish trend continued on Pakistan Stock Exchange Wednesday as investors remained cautious on concerns over the prevailing political and economic situation in the country.

The benchmark KSE-100 Index plunged by 489.56 points or 1.23 percent and closed at 39,342.89 points. The index crossed 40,000 psychological level to hit 40,022.02 points intraday high, however it failed to continue this trend due to selling pressure and dropped in negative zone hitting 39,276.70 points intraday low.

Due to investors lack of interest, trading activity remained thin as daily volumes on the ready counter decreased to 166.000 million shares as compared to 265.284 million shares traded Tuesday while daily traded value on the ready counter declined to Rs 4.052 billion against Tuesday’s Rs 6.536 billion.

BRIndex100 decreased by 63.71 points or 1.62 percent to close at 3,874.02 points with total daily turnover of 134.083 million shares.

BRIndex30 declined by 313.77 points or 2.25 percent to close at 13,661.66 points with total daily trading volumes of 95.083 million shares.

Foreign investors however remained net buyers of shares worth $1.004 million. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 59 billion to Rs 6.296 trillion. Out of total 329 active scrips, 195 closed in negative and 115 in positive while the value of 19 stocks remained unchanged.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 17.470 million shares and closed at Rs 1.16, down Rs 0.01 followed by Hum Network that lost Rs 0.02 to close at Rs 5.60 with 11.875 million shares. Dewan Motors declined by Rs 1.00 to close at Rs 11.47 with 8.573 million shares.

Nestle Pakistan and Premium Textile were the top gainers increasing by Rs 100.00 and Rs 45.50 respectively to close at Rs 5350.00 and Rs 669.79 while Rafhan Maize and Sanofi-Aventis were the top losers declining by Rs 600.00 and Rs 73.99 respectively to close at Rs 7755.00 and Rs 966.01.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that a negative session was witnessed at the PSX. The benchmark KSE-100 Index recorded a lackluster session as investor participation remained low due to ongoing political unrest, with the index shedding 555.75 points intraday volumes in the main board. However, decent volumes were recorded in the 3rd tier stocks.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Commercial Banks (down 159.0 points), Technology & Communication (down 106.4 points), Fertilizer (down 71.2 points), E&P (down 52.2 points) and OMCs (down 24.4 points).

BR Automobile Assembler Index decreased by 54.81 points or 0.74 percent to close at 7,323.10 points with total turnover of 10.045 million shares.

BR Cement Index lost 10.17 points or 0.27 percent to close at 3,782.26 points with 7.678 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index declined by 149.48 points or 1.85 percent to close at 7,916.75 points with 10.818 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index inched down by 18.53 points or 0.3 percent to close at 6,172.83 points with 12.373 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index fell by 44.51 points or 1.24 percent to close at 3,553.86 points with 12.826 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index plunged by 136.1 points or 3.07 percent to close at 4,302.95 points with 44.042 million shares.

Muhammad Shuja Qureshi at JS Global Capital said that the market remained under pressure and ended the day at 39,343, losing 490 points.

Despite a negative closing, buying in selective stocks was witnessed, noticeable among them were LOTCHEM (up 7.5 percent), EPCL (up 1.3 percent) and LUCK (up 2.1 percent).

Volumes remained thin at 65 million shares where WTL (down 0.9 percent), HUMNL (down 0.4 percent), DFML (down 8.0 percent), KEL (up 0.4 percent) and HASCOL (up 2.7 percent) were the volume leaders.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022

Comments

Comments are closed.