Market watch: Bourse ends dismal week down as profit-taking continues

Benchmark KSE-100 index falls 214.57 points

KARACHI: Despite Pakistan’s successful transition to the MSCI emerging market status early this week, successive sessions at the bourse failed to reflect investor enthusiasm and last trading day of the week was no different.

At close on Friday, the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark KSE 100-share Index showed a fall of 214.57 points or 0.42% to end at 50,742.03.

Elixir Securities analyst Ali Raza said Pakistan equities closed fourth consecutive session in the red as morning gains were wiped out by profit-taking.

“The day kicked off on a positive note with stocks trading higher for a brief period, helped mainly by oil shares as investors tracked uptrend in global crude prices,” he said.



However, the KSE-100 could not sustain the gains for long as profit-taking continued, primarily in blue chips, which dragged the index near 50,750 by market’s close, said Raza.

“Upcoming announcement of monetary policy at the weekend and federal budget next week likely kept most investors on the sidelines,” the analyst said.

JS Global analyst Nabeel Haroon said a volatile session was witnessed at the bourse as the KSE-100 index traded between an intra-day high of +241 points and intra-day low of -290 points.

“Most of the selling pressure was witnessed in second half of the day, which resulted in the market closing at 50,742 (-214 points),” said Haroon.

“Friday’s major laggards were UBL (-1.15%), Hubco (-1.85%), Lucky Cement (-1.14%) and HBL (-0.54%) as they cumulatively contributed -112 points to the index.”

The cement sector continued its previous day’s trend of profit-booking as Cherat Cement (-3.63%), DG Khan Cement (-1.69%) and Lucky Cement closed in the red zone.



On the other hand, the exploration and production (E&P) sector gained to close 0.36% higher than the previous day as US oil prices climbed to a one-month high, trading at $49.93 per barrel, said Haroon.

Pakistan Oilfields (+2.13%) and Pakistan Petroleum Limited (+1.06%) emerged as winners of the E&P sector.

Overall, trading volumes increased to 345 million shares compared with Thursday's tally of 302 million.

Shares of 413 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 243 stocks closed higher and 162 declined while eight remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs12.4 billion.

Silkbank was the volume leader with 24.3 million shares, gaining Rs0.04 to close at Rs1.91. It was followed by Summit Bank with 21.4 million shares, gaining Rs0.29 to close at Rs6.63 and Kohinoor Spinning with 16.2 million shares, gaining Rs0.76 to close at Rs1.87.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs412 million during the trading session, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.