KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Monday remained under pressure due to selling in almost all sectors on investor concerns over political unrest in the country. The market opened on a positive note and stayed volatile throughout the day. Despite foreign buying, the stock market closed in negative zone with very low volumes.
The benchmark KSE-100 Index hit 43,767.77 points intraday high and 43,324.83 points intraday low before closing at 43,366.89 points with net loss of 286.44 points or 0.66 percent.
Trading activity remained very low as total daily volumes on ready counter decreased to 115.118 million shares as compared to 149.299 million shares traded in previous session, while total daily traded value on the ready counter declined to Rs 3.645 billion against previous session’s Rs 5.265 billion.
BRIndex100 lost 38.79 points or 0.89 percent to close at 4,313.08 points with total daily turnover of 85.385 million shares.
BRIndex30 declined by 453.54 points or 2.91 percent to close at 15,154.20 points with total daily trading volumes of 58.353 million shares.
Foreign investors however remained net buyers of shares worth $538,098. The market capitalization declined by Rs 56 billion to Rs 7.394 trillion. Out of total 334 active scrips, 242 closed in negative and only 79 in positive while the value of 13 stocks remained unchanged.
Flying Cement (R) was the volume leader with 11.632 million shares however lost Rs 0.10 to close at Rs 0.16 followed by Pak Elektron (R) that gained Rs 0.18 to close at Rs 2.00 with 8.140 million shares. Ghani Global Holding closed at Rs 14.68, down Rs 0.64 with 7.022 million shares.
Bata Pak and Ismail Industries were the top gainers increasing by Rs 48.88 and Rs 20.43 respectively to close at Rs 2,088.88 and Rs 549.99 while Colgate Palmolive and Sapphire Fiber were the top losers declining by Rs 97.00 and Rs 57.01 respectively to close at Rs 2,200.00 and Rs 720.00.
An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that rangebound session was observed due to political unrest. The market opened in the green zone and stayed volatile throughout the day. Main board activity remained dull. On the flip-side, activity continued to remain side-ways as market witnessed hefty volumes in the 3rd tier stocks. In the last trading hour, across the board selling was witnessed which led the index to close in the red zone.
Sectors contributing to the performance include E&P (down 57.7 points), Banks (down 56.7 points), Cement (down 56.5 points), Technology (down 52.2 points) and Power (down 29.0 points).
BR Automobile Assembler Index plunged by 124.61 points or 1.4 percent to close at 8,775.61 points with total turnover of 489,809 shares.
BR Cement Index declined by 78.65 points or 1.54 percent to close at 5,012.15 points with 5.139 million shares.
BR Commercial Banks Index lost 52.36 points or 0.53 percent to close at 9,797.41 points with 8.199 million shares.
BR Power Generation and Distribution Index fell by 52.04 points or 0.95 percent to close at 5,425.09 points with 5.713 million shares.
BR Oil and Gas Index decreased by 42.83 points or 1.09 percent to close at 3,879.16 points with 5.623 million shares.
BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 3,388.68 points, down 65.1 points or 1.88 percent with 22.567 million shares.
Mubashir Anis Naviwala at JS Global Capital said that downtrend continued as benchmark KSE-100 closed at 43,367, losing 286 points compared to the previous session. Profit taking continued across the board throughout the day.
Traded volume stood at 115 million shares where GGL (down 4.2 percent), TELE (down 8.4 percent), TPLP (down 3.3 percent), WTL (down 1.2 percent) and EFERT (up 3.3 percent) were the volume leaders.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022