The Karachi share market witnessed heavy selling pressure during the week after removal of price floor, and the KSE-100 index registered a record decline of 1,672.68 points, or 18.2 percent, to close at 7,514.42 points.
"Although this fall was not unexpected, but the surprising thing was high activity in low price stocks, but overall volume remained low", on e analyst said. The index closed the week at 7,514.42 points which was down 47 percent on year-to-date basis.
Market capitalisation declined by Rs 481 billion, or 17 percent, to Rs 2.327 trillion. It was down 58 percent on year-to-date basis and 61 percent from its peak level.
Atif Zafar, an analyst at JS Global Capital, said that due to low activity in high cap stocks, average daily volume in the ready market remained low, at 47.31million shares. "Though significant volumes were witnessed in stocks whose prices were less than Rs 5/share, such as Zeal Pak, Pakistan Cement, TRG, KESC and Dewan Salman Fibre, the volumes in number of share seemed decent. But in terms of value it was down 99 percent from last 12 month (excluding the floor period) average volume of Rs 23 billion".
The market started under heavy selling pressure and the index lost 370 points on Monday. The declining trend continued and the index lost another 372.51 points on Tuesday, 338.96 points on Wednesday, 320.37 points on Thursday and 270.84 points on Friday.
Despite low activity in the ready market, off-market activity still remained relatively high, where average daily volumes were 7.5 million shares. "This high volume in off-market, as compared to ready market, showed that we may see further price erosion in large cap stocks in the coming week", Atif said.