Pakistan Stock Exchange Wednesday remained under pressure due to selling from local and foreign investors. BRIndex100 lost 23.13 points or 0.51 percent to close at 4,513.60 points. BRIndex100 touched intraday high of 4,547.89 and intraday low of 4,507.06 points. Volumes stood at 64.678 million shares.
BRIndex30 decreased by 108.77 points or 0.48 percent to close at 22,622.23 points with a turnover of 34.522 million shares. The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 158.33 points or 0.37 percent to close at 42,301.20 points. Trading activity remained thin as daily volumes on the ready counter decreased to 77.526 million shares as compared to 181.104 million shares traded Tuesday.
Foreign investors remained net sellers of shares worth $2.2 million. The market capitalization declined by Rs 16 billion to Rs 8.712 trillion. Out of total 342 active scrips, 184 closed in negative, 131 in positive while the value of 27 stocks remained unchanged. Faysal Bank was the volume leader with 5.105 million shares. However, it lost Re 0.19 to close at Rs 24.39 followed by 1st Dawood Bank that decreased by Re 0.30 to close at Rs 4.16 with 3.918 million shares. Pak Tobacco and Punjab Oil were the top gainers with Rs 41.67 and Rs 13.53, respectively to close at Rs 1,822.50 and Rs 296.99. Bata Pak and Hinopak Motor were the top losers with Rs 75.00 and Rs 24.00, respectively to close at Rs 2,165.00 and Rs 1,002.14.
BR Commercial Banks Index decreased by 38.21 points or 0.45 percent to close at 8,427.41 points with total turnover of 12.834 million shares.
BR Cement Index declined by 72.64 points or 1.36 percent to close at 5,263.19 points with 6.150 million shares.
BR Oil and Gas Index lost 14.71 points or 0.27 percent to close at 5,342.58 points with 3.291 million shares.
BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 1,125.24 points, down 2.82 points or 0.25 percent with 5.814 million shares.
BR Power Generation and Distribution Index lost 3.28 points or 0.05 percent to close at 6,252.61 points with 3.239 million shares.
An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that the market remained jittery throughout the day and Tuesday's buying at lower levels couldn't give confidence to investors to step forward and buy aggressively.
The market saw drastically low volumes of recent times and yesterday's selling from foreigners concerned local institutional investors to take further positions, especially in Banks.
Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (down 50 points), Banks (down 28 points), O&GMCs (down 17 points), E&P (down 14 points) and Fertilizer (down 14 points).
Scripts that contributed positively include PAKT (up 21 points), MEBL (up 7 points), PPL (up 6 points), APL (up 4 points) and BAFL (up 3 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include LUCK (down 26 points), UBL (down 25 points), OGDC (down 20 points), ENGRO (down 12 points) and SNGP (down 11 points).