Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained volatile on first trading day of the week and the benchmark KSE-100 index shed 152 points to close at 34,567 points on Monday down from 34,719 points on Friday. Ahsan Mehanti, Director at Arif Habib, said that stocks closed bearish amid pressure in cement, banking and oil scrips amid consolidation post major earning announcements at the PSX.
"Activity was led by second and third tier scrips and speculations over the Federal Budget levies on corporate sector, rising political uncertainty and weak earnings outlook in the banking, textile sector played a catalyst role in bearish close amid institutional support on strong financial results in the power and auto stocks," he added.
Hammad Aman, Manager Equity Sales at Topline, said that the week started with a dull session at local bourse as benchmark KSE-100 index decline 0.44 percent end of the session. He said that decrease in international oil prices prompted profit taking in exploration and production stocks. Resultantly, Pakistan Petroleum (PPL), Pakistan Oilfields (POL) and Oil & Gas Development Company (OGDC) declined 1.4-1.9 percent during the trading.
Investors closed out position in select banking sector stocks, which closed in the red after rising last week. MCB Bank (MCB) declined 1.5% while United Bank (UBL) dropped 0.5% on Monday, he added. During the trading, the index fluctuated in red and green zone touching intraday highest level of 34,806 points and lowest level of 34,488 points. Trading volume declined 27 percent to 185 million shares on Monday compared to 255 million on Friday. Similarly, trading value decreased 47 percent to Rs 7 billion. Overall market capitalization stood at Rs 7.171 trillion, fell Rs 35 billion.
Trading took place in 356 scrips, of which 128 closed positive, 216 negative and share price of some 12 stocks were remained unchanged. B O Punjab, TRG Pak Ltd., Sui North Gas, Dewan Motors and Bank Al-Falah were leading scrips with trading shares of 23 million, 16 million, 14 million, 13.2 million and 8.4 million respectively. Ahmed Saeed Khan of JS Research said that volatility prevailed on the first session of the week as the index shed around 152 points.
The Oil and Gas sector remained under pressure amid global crude oil prices coming down from their high over the weekend to trade around $46.80 per barrel (Brent). Major laggards of the aforementioned sector were NRL (-2.30%), ATRL (-2.07%) and OGDC (-1.89%). Profit taking was witnessed in the Cements and Banking sector amid increased political noise and uncertainty, LUCK (-1.19%) and FABL (-2.76%) were the major laggards of their respective sectors, he informed.
However, he said that despite gas tariff reduction the Fertiliser failed to perform and remained under pressure, closing major scrips in the red zone. FFBL (-2.58%) was the top laggard whereas FATIMA (+0.42%) was the only script to close positively in the Fertiliser sector. Siemens Pak and Ferozsons (Lab) were the top gainers and their share prices surged Rs 49.37 and Rs 28.38 to close at Rs 1,036.87 and Rs 839.05 respectively. While, Philips Morris Pak and Island Textile were the top losers and declined by Rs 44.66 and Rs 42.87 to close at Rs 1,700.81 and Rs 832.13 respectively.
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