Bullish sentiment could not sustain on the Lahore Stock Exchange on Wednesday on account of a severe incident of suicide bombing attack on Police Emergency-15 office in the city and the equities fell under selling pressure and investors offloaded their positions to get out of the market.
However, the LSE-25 index managed a gain of 12.84 points and closed at 2150.91 points against 2138.07 of Tuesday, while transaction volume marginally increased to 13.581 million shares as compared to 13.202 million shares. The market took start on a healthy sign and rose by 40 points just in fifteen minutes of the commencement of trading.
The market, following fresh buying support, was moving in green zone but abruptly started declining as soon as the sound of the bomb blast was heard in the LSE building. In consequence of the attack, windowpanes of a number of buildings in the vicinity of the targeted building were broken while dozens of people lost their lives and hundreds got injured.
The uptrend could not continue for a long time due to selling pressure that ignited offloading of positions by the investors. The market kept on moving down, but the last hour buying made the index to close with marginal gain. The declining stocks were ahead of advancing ones as out of a total of 106 companies, 19 showed strength, 36 went down while 51 closed at their overnight closing levels.
Services Industries posted a gain of Rs 5.47, OGDC appreciated by Rs 1.90, Arif Habib Securities improved by Rs 1.49, while ICI Pakistan was up by Rs 1.15. MCB Bank declined by Rs 2.19, Engro Chemical lost Rs 2.18, while Pak Oilfields and Adamjee Insurance were up by Rs 1.40 and Rs 1.29 respectively. Pakistan PTA with trading of 2.372 million shares topped the volume leaders, followed by Arif Habib Securities with 2.039 million shares.