KSE-100 ends week with 0.46% loss, volume reduces significantly

After witnessing its best day of the year, the KSE-100 saw a session of profit-taking as the benchmark index registered a fall of 0.46% on Friday.

On Thursday, the benchmark index saw its largest increase – in percentage terms – in 2022, as the index rose 2.59%.

KSE-100 sees best day in 2022 as market ignores political noise

However, range-bound activity was witnessed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday as the index moved between a high of 43,966.28 (up 112 points) and 43,596.51 (down 257).

At close, the benchmark KSE-100 Index ended with a drop of 200.29 points or 0.46% to settle at 43,653.33. The benchmark index lost 2.02% on a weekly basis.

“Pressure was observed in the second half of trading session, as investors preferred to reduce their exposure in the market before the weekend given ongoing local political uncertainty and volatility in commodity prices on the backdrop of Russia-Ukraine armed conflict,” said Topline Securities in its post-market comment.

On the economic front, the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) for the week ended March 10, 2022 recorded an increase of 16.49% YoY and 0.52% WoW.

On the corporate front, Greentree Holdings Limited acquired additional 2.94 million voting shares of TRG Pakistan Limited at the rate of Rs74.80 per share, a notice issued to the bourse showed.

On account of the latest acquisition, Greentree’s total shareholding in TRG Pakistan has increased to 56,018,024 shares from 53,077,377 shares which represent 10.27% of the total issued voting shares of the company, read the notice.

Sectors dragging the benchmark index lower included banking (43.41 points), cement (42.65 points) and oil and gas exploration (42.36 points).

Volume on the all-share index decreased significantly to 149.3 million from 271.91 million on Thursday. The value of shares traded also declined to Rs5.27 billion from Rs7.5 billion recorded in the previous session.

TPL Properties was the volume leader with 12.27 million shares, followed by Pak Elektron (R) with 11.91 million shares, and TPL Corporation Limited with 9.4 million shares.

Shares of 332 companies were traded on Friday, of which 110 registered an increase, 205 recorded a fall, and 17 remained unchanged.