Selling pressure: KSE-100 sheds 593 points in another negative session

Selling pressure was again witnessed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as the benchmark KSE-100 Index lost 593 points during trading on Tuesday.

The KSE-100 saw some buying in the first few hours, which helped the index hit an intra-day high of 72,119.66.

However, bears dominated again in the final hours and pushed the index into the negative territory.

At close, the benchmark index settled at 71,102.55, down by 592.49 points or 0.83%.

Across-the-board selling pressure was witnessed especially among key sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, chemical, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies and OMCs, with index-heavy stocks of OGDC, HASCOL, SSGC, and DGKC trading in the red.

On Monday, heavy selling pressure was witnessed at the PSX amid uncertainty among investors over the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decision regarding the policy rate, as the benchmark index settled at 71,695.03, down by 1,047.71 points or 1.44%.

In a key development, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday completed its final review of Pakistan’s economic reform programme supported by a $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) and allowed the immediate disbursement of $1.1 billion.

The development comes after Pakistani authorities reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF on the second and final review of the SBA last month.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday kept the key interest rate steady at 22% for the seventh straight meeting.

Globally, Asian stocks inched higher on Tuesday as investors awaited a slew of economic data, corporate earnings and the US Federal Reserve’s policy meeting, while the yen was slightly weaker a day after suspected intervention rescued it from 34-year lows.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.36% higher, set to clock in a nearly 1% gain for the month, its third straight month of gains.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani rupee registered marginal improvement, appreciating 0.03% against the US dollar in the inter-bank market on Tuesday. At close, the local unit settled at 278.31, a gain of Re0.09 against the greenback, as per the State Bank of Pakistan.

Volume on the all-share index decreased to 560.55 million from 613.31 million a session ago.

The value of shares also declined to Rs25.73 billion from Rs26.31 billion in the previous session.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 47.69 million shares, followed by Pace (Pak) Ltd with 27.12 million shares, and Pak Petroleum with 23.16 million shares.

Shares of 384 companies were traded on Tuesday, of which 113 registered an increase, 244 recorded a fall, while 27 remained unchanged.