Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday opened on a strong negative note and saw 6th market halt at 09:37am. Trading remained suspended for 45 minutes. After reopening, the market rebounded and recovered most of its intra-day losses on the back of fresh buying in various sectors, however it closed in red zone.
BRIndex100 lost 21.2 points or 0.69 percent to close at 3,061.68 points. BRIndex100 touched intraday high of 3,103.44 and intraday low of 2,858.90 points. Volumes stood at 282.817 million shares.
BRIndex30 decreased by 354.02 points or 2.29 percent to close at 15,071.86 points with a turnover of 214.527 million shares.
The KSE-100 Index hit 28,453.05 points intra-day low level, however closed at 30,129.83 points with a net loss of 286.22 points or 0.94 percent. Daily volumes on ready counter increased to 308.346 million shares as compared to 186.654 million shares traded Wednesday.
The market capitalization declined by Rs 83 billion to Rs 5.799 trillion. Out of total 358 active scrips, 235 closed in negative, 108 in positive while the value of 15 stocks remained unchanged.
K-Electric was the volume leader with 22.136 million shares. It gained Re 0.16 to close at Rs 3.04 followed by Unity Foods that lost Re 0.89 to close at Rs 8.75 with 19.327 million shares.
EFU Life and Engro Corp were the top gainers with Rs 13.32 and Rs 11.53, respectively to close at Rs 196.78 and Rs 262.64. Nestle Pakistan and Colgate Palmolive were the top losers with Rs 502.14 and Rs 45.71, respectively to close at Rs 6,700.00 and Rs 2,170.66.
BR Automobile Assembler Index declined by 259.64 points or 5.31 percent to close at 4,630.75 points with total turnover of 1.671 million shares.
BR Cement Index plunged by 245.25 points or 6.95 percent to close at 3,283.10 points with 48.830 million shares.
BR Commercial Banks Index increased by 94.48 points or 1.39 percent to close at 6,906.51 points with 43.275 million shares.
BR Power Generation and Distribution Index decreased by 201.35 points or 5.1 percent to close at 3,748.75 points with 36.889 million shares.
BR Oil and Gas Index shed 44.99 points or 1.54 percent to close at 2,868.08 points with 37.335 million shares.
BR Tech. & Comm. Index fell by 39.75 points or 5.3 percent to close at 710.79 points with 21.949 million shares.
An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that the market witnessed the 6th halt when the KSE-100 Index dropped 1,562 points, having traded 8.5 million shares.
Overall, the index lost 1,964 points during the session, reaching 28,452 points and rebounded to erase all the losses and trading 100 points green for a while, only to resume selling later on.
Buying activity was largely observed in Fertilizer, Banking and Oil & Gas sectors. Cement sector also saw buying activity initially which brought the cement sector scrips from lower lock to tradable range, however, selling activity brought these stocks back to lower circuits.
Cement sector led the volumes with 48.8 million shares, followed by Banks (43.3 million shares) and Power (36.9 million shares).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (down 179 points), Power (down 104 points), O&GMCs (down 55 points), Textile (down 53 points), Food (down 48 points), Fertilizer ( up 215 points) and Banks (up 115 points).
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include FFC (up 91 points), ENGRO (up 81 points), MCB (up 66 points), BAHL (up 52 points) and EFERT (up 46 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include HUBC (down 95 points), LUCK (down 85 points), UBL (down 65 points), NESTLE (down 50 points) and DGKC (down 26 points).