Bulls take a breather

Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday witnessed a volatile session with the benchmark KSE-100 index moving between 53,123.54 points intra-day high and 52,731.68 points intra-day low. The index closed at 52,869.01 points, down 7.45 points. Foreign investors also remained on the selling side and withdrew $11.7 million from the market. Trading activity also remained low as daily trading volumes on the ready counter decreased to 408.887 million shares as compared to 606.693 million shares traded Wednesday.
The market capitalization declined by Rs 01 billion to Rs 10.445 trillion. Out of total 401 active scrips, 237 closed in negative, 153 in positive while the value of 11 stocks remained unchanged. Power Cement (R) was volume leader with 46.744 million shares. It gained Rs 0.14 to close at Rs 2.44 followed by Bank of Punjab (R) that lost Rs 0.09 to close at Rs 1.78 with 25.494 million shares. Engro Polymer increased by Rs 1.52 to close at Rs 32.05 with 22.961 million shares.
Mari Petroleum and Rafhan Maize were the top gainers with Rs 63.50 and Rs 50.00, respectively to close at Rs 1,732.33 and Rs 7,250.00. Exide Pak and Murree Brewery were the top losers with Rs 54.82 and Rs 20.61, respectively to close at Rs 1,041.64 and Rs 769.39.
Arhum Ghous at JS Global Capital said that volatile session was witnessed at the local bourse as the KSE-100 index traded between an intraday high of 251 points and an intraday low of 142 points. Most of the selling pressure was witnessed during the second half of the day. Overall, profit-taking was observed in the Banking sector where big banks such as MCB (down 2.22 percent), UBL (down 2.37 percent) and HBL (down 0.44 percent) lost value to close in the red zone. Steel sector gained to close higher than its previous day as ISL (up 4.77 percent), INIL (up 4.71 percent) and MUGHAL (up 5.0 percent) closed in green.
An analyst at Topline Securities said that after a relentless charge in the last three trading sessions, bulls took a breather with the benchmark KSE-100 index ending flat at 52,869 points. The investors flocked to MSCI small cap stocks as THALL, PAEL, ISL and SNGP closed up 5.0, 4.9, 4.8 and 3.4 percent respectively, with cumulatively contribution of 107.4 points to the index. Amongst sectors, Banks' peeled 169 points off the index as investors pocket profits. BAFL, NBP, UBL and MCB were down 3.5, 3.0, 2.4 and 2.2 percent, respectively.