Equities shed 268.36 points

Equities at the Karachi bourse lost 268.36 points or 0.79 percent to close at 33,575.94 compared to Monday''s 33,844.30. The day''s 330 million shares higher trades beat the previous session''s 263.4 million with traded value plunging to Rs 11.85 billion from Rs 16 billion. Of the total 382 scrips, 115 managed to appreciate and 247 lost their worth. The value of 20 shares stayed unchanged. The market capitalisation also ended negative at Rs 7.273 trillion.
The foreign investors, however, looked positive as they ended the day''s trading with a net buying of $ 3.418 million. Bank of Punjab, which rose to Rs 10.30 per share, led the day''s volume and traded by 79 million stakes. Other best performing stocks were KASB Bank 67.7 million, Jahangir Siddiqui Company 27 million, Byco Petroleum 15.5 million, Pak Elektron 11.5 million, Engro Fertilizer 7.4 million, Engro Corporation 7.4 million, Fauji Cement 6.9 million, Faisal Bank 6.4 million and Engro Foods 6.2 million shares.
Volume on the futures market also swelled to 36.26 million contracts compared to 34.25 million of the last trading session. The bearish trend, Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation viewed, was attributable to institutional profit-taking post major earnings announcements session.
The day''s catalysts, the analyst said, included weak global commodities, investor run on a defaulting stock brokerage, dismal earnings in oil sector and concerns for economic impact of over $ 1 billion profit repatriation in Jul-Mar''15 by foreign companies. "Investors also preferred to trim their portfolios as results season is about to conclude," commented Mohammad Rizwan at Topline Securities. The small capped stocks like BOP and KASBB witnessed huge volumes. The BOP and MCB Bank announced better-than-expected earnings of Rs 0.84 and Rs 7.19. Despite this, profit-taking was seen in MCB due to what analysts said prevailing weak market sentiment. Engro Corporation, by announcing below expectation results, forced the investors to offload their holdings. This made the stock shed 2.22 percent. Having announced earning per share of Rs 4.64 and Rs 3.94 dividend, the FFC rallied by 1.1 percent. Going forward, equity analysts are pinning hope on the easing inflationary pressures in the country''s inflationary numbers that, they believe, would make the central bank to further slash its discount rate next month.