Bearish trend continued on Lahore Stock Exchange on Tuesday following Benazir Bhutto's murder and equities recorded losses across the board amid selling pressure under the lead of blue chips. The LSE-25 index fell 158.10 points to close at 4346.30 from 4504.40 of Monday, while transaction volume increased to 24.251 million shares against 6.685 million shares traded a day earlier.
Most of the blue chips including Adamjee Insurance, MCB Bank, Pak Oilfields, Engro Chemical, Attock Refinery, Habib Bank, National Bank of Pakistan and ICI Pak remained under pressure while First Capital Equities, Kot Addu Power, Fauji Fertiliser Dewan Salman resisted declines.
The market, as expected, opened on a depressed note and remained in negative zone throughout the day. However, on hope of announcement of general elections date on time encouraged investors to come forward for fresh buying, helping the market to show a slight recovery. In the end, the selling pressure was seen once again and market the closed in red zone, said Athar Muhammad Malik of Mehdi Securities.
"We were expecting that stocks would touch ever highs, around 18000 mark, in the first quarter of 2008 ,and the market was also moving in this direction but crashed," he added. Investors were still anticipating a rebound even from this stage if the date of general elections is announced by the Election Commission.
Declining stocks were ahead of advancing ones as out of a total of 115 active issues, 11 companies registered gains, 56 went down while values of 48 shares closed at their previous levels.
Among gainers, First Capital Equities improved by Rs 2.55, Kot Addu Power managed gain of Rs 2.40 while Fauji Fertiliser and Nimir Resins were up by Rs 1.45 and Rs 0.50 respectively.
In the minus column, JS Global Cap lost Rs 19.80, Adamjee Insurance declined by Rs 17.90, Pakistan Engineering Co and MCB Bank fell by Rs 15.00, Pak Oilfields shed Rs 14.35, while Engro Chemical and Attock Refinery were down by Rs 13.55 and Rs 12.50 respectively. NIB Bank was the market leader whose 2.643 million shares changed hands, followed by Arif Habib Securities with total trading of 2.339 million shares.