Benchmark
KSE-100 index falls 401.32 points.
KARACHI: The stock market remained volatile on Monday after last week’s bullish rallies. Concern over political uncertainty and profit-taking dominated the judgement at the bourse despite rebounding crude oil prices and unchanged interest rate.
The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s benchmark KSE-100 index fell 1.18% or 401.32 points to end at 33,566.22.
According to JS Global analyst Ahmed Saeed Khan, volatility prevailed during the day’s session as the market nosedived after hitting an intraday high of 187 points to close 401 points down.
“Major reason for negative sentiments at the bourse was the fall in global crude oil prices in the previous trading day (Friday) and increasing noise on the domestic political front.
“Major laggards in the oil sector were Pakistan State Oil (PSO -2.01%) and Attock Refinery (ATRL -2.02%). Auto sector also witnessed pressure due to strengthening of the Japanese yen.
“Moreover, profit taking was witnessed in the cement sector with all major scrips closing in the red.
“Moving forward, we expect volatility to persist in the coming sessions.”
Meanwhile, Global Research’s Day Wrap stated that prevailing political uncertainty led to weak market sentiment with regional markets posting a mixed trend for the day, even though unchanged monetary policy rate was expected to play its part but only Allied Bank, Habib Metro and Standard Chartered posted an accumulated gain of 3 points to the index with the rest of the banks ending in the red zone.
“Top ten losing stocks for the day including Engro (-2.31%), MCB Bank (-1.51%) and DG Khan Cement (-2.76%) eroded around 188pts altogether.
“The improved volume of 115 million for the index over Friday’s close was a reflection of selling pressure prevailing within the market.”
Trade volumes rose to 225 million shares compared with Friday’s tally of 196 million shares.
Shares of 363 companies were traded on Monday. At the end of the day 64 stocks closed higher, 279 declined while 20 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs10.3 billion.
TRG Pakistan was the volume leader with 23.5 million shares losing Rs0.13 to finish at Rs33.13. It was followed by Byco Petroleum with 15.6 million shares gaining Rs0.53 to close at Rs19.39 and Jahangir Siddiqui and Company with 11.2 million shares losing Rs0.83 to close at Rs23.24.
Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs339 million during the trade session, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 12th, 2016.
Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ