The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) witnessed another volatile session on the last trading day of the week Friday and the benchmark KSE-100 Index declined by 35 points to close at 35,112 points compared to 35, 147 points Thursday. During the intraday day trading, the market moved pretty erratically and the index touched 35,371 points highest and 35,092 points lowest levels. The market capitalisation declined by Rs 4.7 billion to Rs 7.575 trillion down from Rs 7.579 trillion.
"Activity was dull at the Pakistan bourse as investors remained apprehensive of further foreign selling," said Mohammad Rizwan an analyst at Topline. Investors also preferred to trim their positions ahead of long weekend before Eid, he added. The KSE-100 Index declined by 0.10 percent and the traded volume decreased by 13 percent to 316 million shares Friday compared to 364 million shares last day. The traded value also declined by 26 percent to Rs 10.8 billion down from Rs 14.67 billion, he added.
Major activity was seen in K-Electric Ltd, PACE Pak Ltd, TPL Trakker Ltd, BYCO Petroleum and TRG Pak Ltd with volumes of 21 million, 19 million, 16 million, 14 million and 13.7 million shares, respectively. Trading took place in 347 companies, of which 155 closed in green zone, 179 in the red while share prices of 13 companies remained unchanged.
Major gainers during the session in KSE-100 Index were LUCK, ENGRO and UBL which gained 0.73 percent, 0.55 percent and 0.95 percent, respectively. Major loser were MLCF, PIBTL and KEL which declined 2.63 percent, 4.87 percent and 1.70 percent, respectively. Ahmed Saeed Khan analyst at JS said that volatility was witnessed on Friday as the index juggled between the red and the green zone, with a intraday high of +225 points. The index finally closed down by 35 points at 35,112 level lower volumes.
As the global oil prices slightly recovered, the E&P sector posted gains - HASCOL hit its upper circuit within the first hour of trading. Similarly, PSO, POL and PPL all ended 0.7 percent, 0.6 percent and 0.3 percent higher, he added. He said that growing deposit growths and increasing T-bill yields kept the banking sector upbeat, closing the big five mostly in green. "Going forward we expect the market to continue with this positive trajectory," he said. Ahsan Mehanti, an analyst at Arif Habib Securities, said stocks closed lower on late session profit-taking in select scrips across the board on weak earnings outlook owing to higher tax levies on the corporate sector. The IMF cut on Pakistan Economic Forecast to 2.6pc for 2015, weak global commodities and institutional profit-taking amid rising political uncertainty played a catalytic role in the bearish activity at KSE, he added.