KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday witnessed a bearish trend due to heavy selling by local and foreign investors in almost all sectors.

BRIndex100 lost 83.56 points or 1.95 percent to close at 4,198.92 points. BRIndex100 hit intraday high of 4,284.78 and intraday low of 4,191.01 points. Volumes stood at 277.770 million shares.

BRIndex30 declined by 572.61 points or 2.62 percent to close at 21,270.63 points with a turnover of 165.382 million shares.

The KSE-100 Index plunged by 632.76 points or 1.54 percent to close at 40,564.56 points. Daily trading volumes on the ready counter increased to 328.299 million shares as compared to 244.284 million shares traded Wednesday.

Foreign investors also remained net sellers of shares worth $622,190. The market capitalization declined by Rs 110 billion to Rs 7.464 trillion. Out of total 400 active scrips, 308 closed in negative and only 80 in positive while the value of 12 stocks remained unchanged.

Unity Foods was the volume leader with 29.691 million shares however lost Rs 0.78 to close at Rs 22.35 followed by Soneri Bank that gained Rs 0.64 to close at Rs 9.99 with 22.540 million shares. Island Textile and Wyeth Pak were the top gainers increasing by Rs 99.59 and Rs 76.27 respectively to close at Rs 1427.53 and Rs 1093.22 while Sapphire Textile and Bata Pak were the top losers declining by Rs 70.99 and Rs 52.45 respectively to close at Rs 1060.01 and Rs 1353.33.

BR Automobile Assembler Index decreased by 71.77 points or 0.91 percent to close at 7,823.31 points with total turnover of 2.934 million shares.

BR Cement Index declined by 119.54 points or 2.0 percent to close at 5,856.71 points with 38.608 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index lost 119.25 points or 1.4 percent to close at 8,386.14 points with 48.929 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index fell by 98.49 points or 1.99 percent to close at 4,847.90 points with 14.904 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index plunged by 113.67 points or 2.92 percent to close at 3,782.71 points with 25.860 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 1,898.33 points, down 9.62 points or 0.5 percent with 32.481 million shares.

Maaz Mulla at JS Global Capital said that the selling pressure was witnessed across the board at the PSX, where the index made an intraday low of minus 704 points to close at 40,564 levels, down 1.5 percent.

Coal prices increased in the international market and as a result pressure was witnessed in cement stocks where MLCF (down 3.5 percent), PIOC (down 3.9 percent), LUCK (down 1.4 percent), CHCC (down 2.8 percent), DGKC (down 2.1 percent) and FCCL (down 2.3 percent) lost value to close in the red region.

From the E&Ps, PPL (down 3.0 percent), OGDC (down 2.9 percent) and POL (down 1.9 percent) closed in the negative region despite of price increase of crude oil in the international market. Steel stocks fell below from their previous close where ISL (down 1.4 percent), INIL (down 4.2 percent), ASTL (down 3.7 percent) and AGHA (down 2.6 percent) were the major losers of the mentioned sector.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020