KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Friday witnessed highly volatile session and after oscillating in both directions, closed in negative zone due to selling on investor concerns over alarming CAD number, PKR

depreciation and big jump in cut-off yields of T-Bills, all indicating a hawkish stance in the upcoming monetary policy.

The benchmark KSE-100 index, after moving 43590.86 points intra-day high and 42750.90 points intra-day low, closed at 43,232.83 level, down 1.32 points. Trading activity remained thin as daily volumes on ready counter decreased to 287.730 million shares as compared to 386.753 million shares traded Thursday.

BRIndex100 lost 17.43 points or 0.39 percent to close at 4,398.37 points with total daily turnover of 257.714 million shares.

BRIndex30 declined by 560.37 points or 3.19 percent to close at 16,979.40 points with total daily trading volumes of 164.439 million shares.

Foreign investors also remained net sellers of shares worth $1.274 million. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 4 billion and stood at 7.414 trillion. Out of total 330 active scrips, 205 closed in negative and 115 in positive while the value of 10 stocks remained unchanged.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 24.354 million shares and gained Rs 0.04 to close at Rs 2.05 followed by TPL Properties that declined by Rs 2.43 to close at Rs 37.79 with 20.555 million shares.

Pak Tobacco and Sapphire Fiber were the top gainers increasing by Rs 66.63 and Rs 62.75 respectively to close at Rs 1050.00 and Rs 908.00 while Unilever Foods and Rafhan Maize were the top losers declining by Rs 900.00 and Rs 266.00 respectively to close at Rs 19500.00 and Rs 9509.00.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that bears ruled over the bulls due to concerns over alarming CAD number, PKR slide and big jump in cut-off yields of treasury bills indicating a hawkish stance in the upcoming monetary policy. On Thursday, sharp downfall in the market occurred due to sell-off by mutual funds which eventually created attractive opportunity for value hunters.

Market opened on a positive note as value hunters did aggressive buying in the first session. In the second session, across the board selling was witnessed as PKR closed at all-time low of 176.77, down 0.2 percent.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (down 180 points), Technology (down 63 points), Engineering (down 35 points), Textile Composite (down 31 points) and Refinery (down 25 points).

BR Automobile Assembler Index lost 38.15 points or 0.45 percent to close at 8,405.53 points with total turnover of 1.956 million shares.

BR Cement Index plunged by 254.9 points or 4.5 percent to close at 5,406.27 points with 21.937 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index increased by 192.24 points or 1.95 percent to close at 10,044.41 points with 27.260 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index gained 37.41 points or 0.71 percent to close at 5,334.92 points with 11.255 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index closed at 3,574.34 points, down 8.08 points or 0.23 percent with 12.688 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index decreased by 88.76 points or 2.46 percent to close at 3,521.08 points with 54.788 million shares.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021