Share prices have drifted lower on the Lahore Stock Exchange (LSE) on the second last day of the trading week, losing 1.48 percent on massive selling pressure in Mansha Group shares, which suffered heavily. The LSE-25 Index closed at 4,450.34 points compared with 4,517.29 of Wednesday, registering a fall of 66.95 points.
Turnover improved to 19.408 million shares from 13.532 million, increasing by 5.875 million shares. The market opened one-and-half an hour late because of problems in the Karachi Stock Exchange. The sentiment was positive in the morning, but in subsequent hours, tone turned volatile, brokers said.
Analysts said the volatile political situation had turned the market tone highly uncertain. "The existing state of affairs has forced both foreign and local investors to adopt a cautious approach, also curtailing the volume considerably," a broker said.
He said the entire banking sector was depressed because of problems in the Bank of Punjab (BoP). On Thursday, the Attock Refinery led the gainers' column, while EFU General Insurance and MCB Bank appeared as top losers of the day.
The market did well initially and buying in certain scrips took the index up by over 200 points, but the trend failed to stay on and the sentiment turned depressed, said Amer Hussain Khan of the Invest and Finance Securities Limited. "The highly volatile behaviour of the market disturbed investors and they remained indecisive about their deals," he added.
He said in view of the past week's drastic fall in the KSE index, recovery was due and people were expecting a good trading this week, but it did not happen. On Thursday, early session saw aggressive buying by people who believed that the trend would continue till the close, but heavy selling pressure disappointed them.
He said that Mansha Group shares were the hard hit scrips of late selling pressure. Amer said besides political and some internal reasons, depreciating value of local currency against the US dollar was also a key factor for the bad performance of the market.
He said except for energy shares, apparently there seemed no charm in any other sector and the overall trend might remain bearish. Though reports of concerning holding of by-election as per earlier schedule in June and restoration of all the judges were positive and might trigger buying on Friday (tomorrow), yet people were advised to be very careful and better if they avoid long term investment till May 12.
There were 28 gainers against 36 losers, of which 56 were equal to their previous levels. Among major gainers, Attock Refinery was up Rs 4.80, DS Industries: Rs 1.80; Honda Atlas cars: Rs 1.75; Pervez Ahmed securities: Rs 1.75; and Bank of Punjab: Rs 1.40. In negative column, EFU General Insurance: Rs 13.80; Pakistan Reinsurance Com: Rs 7.40; and Atlas Honda: rupees seven: Arif Habib Securities and Lucky Cement were the volume leaders with 1.958 million and 1.703 million shares.