KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Tuesday witnessed a rangebound session due to political unrest and depreciating Pak rupee.

The market opened on a positive note, however selling in various sectors eroded intraday gains and forced the market to land in negative zone. The benchmark KSE-100 Index hit 43,400.61 points intraday high and 43,164.20 points intraday low before closing at 43,203.79 points, down 26.43 points or 0.06 percent.

Daily trading volumes on ready counter increased to 138.281 million shares as compared to 124.946 million shares traded on Monday while total daily traded value increased to Rs 5.005 billion against previous day’s Rs 3.934 billion.

BRIndex100 lost 1.8 points or 0.04 percent to close at 4,292.03 points with total daily turnover of 111.946 million shares.

BRIndex30 closed at 15,049.98 points, up 156.26 points or 1.05 percent with total daily trading volumes of 71.594 million shares.

Foreign investors remained on the selling side with net outflow of $958,407. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 9 billion to Rs 7.301 trillion. Out of total 320 active scrips, 155 closed in positive and 143 in negative while the value of 22 stocks remained unchanged.

Treet Corp was the volume leader with 15.350 million shares and gained Rs 0.20 to close at Rs 30.07 followed by TPL Properties that closed at Rs 17.88, up Rs 0.50 with 8.380 million shares. Pak Elektron (R) inched up by Rs 0.09 to close at Rs 1.00 with 7.358 million shares. Unilever Foods and Colgate Palmolive were the top gainers increasing by Rs 200.00 and Rs 88.00 respectively to close at Rs 23,449.50 and Rs 2,288.00 while Rafhan Maize and Nestle Pakistan were the top losers declining by Rs 296.67 and Rs 124.40 respectively to close at Rs 11,403.33 and Rs 5,515.60.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that a rangebound session was observed due to political unrest and PKR devaluation against dollar. The market opened in the green zone but 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, profit taking was witnessed which led the index to close in the red zone.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (down 36.2 points), E&P (down 25.1 points), Cements (down 18.9 points) and Automobile Parts (down 12.0 points).

BR Automobile Assembler Index gained 46.4 points or 0.53 percent to close at 8,820.68 points with 800,927 shares.

BR Cement Index lost 21.75 points or 0.43 percent to close at 5,068.32 points with 9.144 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index decreased by 27.41 points or 0.28 percent to close at 9,726.38 points with 22.209 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index increased by 54.47 points or 0.99 percent to close at 5,567.77 points with 6.905 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index closed at 3,711.26 points, down 15.87 points or 0.43 percent with 5.289 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index inched up by 14.27 points or 0.43 percent to close at 3,351.36 points with 23.554 million shares.

Mubashir Anis Naviwala at JS Global Capital said that the market activity remained rangebound due to concerns over domestic politics and economic outlook.

Uncertainty kept investors shy from healthy participation. KSE100 moved between 234 points touching a high of 43,398 and a low of 43,164. Major contribution to the traded volume of 138 million shares was from TREET (up 0.7 percent), TPLP (up 2.9 percent), SMBL (up 4.2 percent), TELE (up 2.2 percent) and WTL (up 3.4 percent).

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022