Karachi share market witnessed another highly volatile session on Tuesday with the benchmark KSE-100 index oscillating between 5,400.75 points intra-day high and 5,258.48 points intra-day low level due to investors' lack of confidence, analysts said.
Finally the index closed at 5,384.87 points with a net gain of 50.92 points from the previous day's closing of 5,333.95 points. Trading activity shrank further as the volume at ready market declined to 140.966 million shares as compared to 177.668 million shares traded a day earlier.
The overall market capitalisation increased by Rs 14 billion to Rs 1.703 trillion. Out of the total 266 active scrips, 152 closed in the negative and 96 in the positive while the value of 18 scrips remained unchanged. NIB Bank was the overall volume leader of the day with 21.669 million shares and gained Re. 0.03 to close at Rs 5.45.
Pioneer Cement increased by Re. 0.59 to close at Rs 9.27 with 7.489 million shares. Nishat Mills (R) surged by Re. 0.19 to close at Rs 1.17 with 7.123 million shares. OGDC increased by Re. 0.89 to close at Rs 45.51 with 6.753 million shares. Jahangir Siddiqui Co gained Rs 1.46 to close at Rs 30.79 with 6.139 million shares. NBP surged by Rs 2.44 to close at Rs 60.00 with 5.287 million shares.
WorldCall Telecom lost Re. 0.10 to close at Rs 2.94 with 5.283 million shares. PTCL declined by Re. 0.20 to close at Rs 15.29 with 4.594 million shares. Zeal Pak decreased by Re. 0.06 to close at Rs 0.36 with 4.463 million shares. Arif Habib Sec gained Re. 1.00 to close at Rs 20.39 with 4.405 million shares.
Pak Services and Dawood Hercules were the highest gainers and gained Rs 9.00 and Rs 5.73 to close at Rs 198.00 and Rs 120.43, respectively while EFU Life Assurance and Bhanero Textile were the worst losers and lost Rs 9.15 and Rs 8.80 to close at Rs 174.03 and Rs 167.33, respectively.
Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein Securities said that the absence of triggering factor kept the benchmark in an indecisive mode, the value buyers stood to their stringent limits while market participants traded in the selected stocks in small volumes, mainly to get the feel of the market. Although the index managed to stay in the band of 100 points through out the session, the underlying tone stayed bearish.
The absence of buyers on dips forced the initial accumulators, opting for profit taking, to wait, as the sell off would only result in erosion of values. Buying in selected stocks was witnessed, mainly in banking, oil and gas exploration and other individual stocks, since the participants are trading well below their potential.
The buying failed to have any impact, thereby indicating cautious approach even by the liquid players, who displayed strength around 4,700 levels. The end of the day, witnessed speculative buying activity in selected group stocks, having decent weight in the index, thereby not only allowing the benchmark to maintain a positive stance, but also offering trading opportunity to the market men in a limited span.