Profit-taking by institutional investors enabled the bears to overpower bulls at the Karachi share market Tuesday. The day saw the KSE-100 index shedding 269 points or 0.81 percent to close at 33,035.77 from 33,304.64 points of the previous session. "Stocks closed bearish... amid institutional profit-taking in overbought stocks across-the-board," Ahsan Mehanti, a director at Arif Habib Corp said.
The investors, the analyst said, ignored the strong result announcements in chemical and pharma sectors. Sentiment on the foreign investor front, however, appeared to have been positive with offshore investors adding $7.42 million to their Monday's net buying of $1.805 million.
The index, which gained 3.7 percent during last four sessions, moved upward initially to hit the intraday high of 33,365.86 points but then ebbed to the session low of 32,825.92. "Investors' focus remained towards converting future positions to next futures contracts," opined Topline analyst Mohammad Rizwan. While the trading volume on the ready-counter dipped to 251 million shares from previous 382 million, the turnover on the futures market was robust surging to 75 million contracts from 62.7 million of the last session.
Investors also remained concerned about the news that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had recommended to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to collect data about the sources of investment, said Rizwan.
The traded value also declined to Rs 13.7 billion compared to Rs 20 billion a day earlier. Of the total 347 issues, only 85 managed to stay higher. Majority 239 lost their worth while 23 remained unchanged. The market capitalisation too shrank to Rs 7.198 trillion from Rs 7.247 trillion.
Pak Elektron, up 0.44 percent to Rs 60.72, was the day's volume leader with 29.5 million of its listed shares traded. Others to follow were Bank of Punjab 24 million, TRG Pakistan 18.6 million, Jahangir Siddiqui Company 17 million, Fauji Cement 14.7 million, Byco Petroleum 12.8 million, K-Electric 11.7 million, Habib Bank 8 million and Pakistan International Bulk Terminal 6.6 million shares.
Led by better-than-expected quarterly results, EFOODS rallied for the second session to close at five percent upper limit. SEARL, announcing impressive March results, was traded by 1.9 million shares to close five percent upper limit. Under pressure were textile and the index heavyweight oil sectors. The 16 percent, Year-on-Year, decrease in textile exports made GATM, NML, NCL and KTML to lose 4.96, 4.17, 3.33 and 2.57 percent, respectively.
Barring PPL and APL that barely remained in green, the oil sector scrips were kept under pressure by what analysts said declining global oil prices. Equity analyst Mehanti said the NAB's suggestions for the FBR to check tax evasion in exchange transactions, dismal data on textile sector exports for Jul-Mar'15 and cautious activity ahead of NA-246 by-polls on April 23 played as a catalytic role in the day's bearish activity. Analysts expect the market to stay volatile going forward; however, some say smooth futures rollover and further clarification on the NAB statement may bring investors' interest back.
Comments
Comments are closed.