Four day rally at stock market ends

The stock market witnessed a decline on Thursday, putting an end to a four-day rally, as the market corroborated Wednesday’s economic data points and T-Bill auction rates.

The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 91.20 points to close at 10,095.80 with 92 million shares traded. “Investors chose to book profits ahead of Friday’s meeting on margin products. Stocks witnessed losses which intensified in the final minutes of trading,” according to JS Global Capital analyst, Ahmed Rauf.

The index had gained more than six per cent during the course of the last six trading sessions and had ended at a two-month high on Wednesday.

NBP, the largest commercial bank, was a contradiction and its stock price went up by two per cent in response to rumours of foreign buying in its stock.

Volume fell to 91.69 million shares from 121.26 million shares traded on Wednesday.

“The index has posted decent gains in the last few days so it was due for a correction, which we saw today as investors opted to book profits,” said analysts.

According to dealers, a lack of interest from foreign investors also contributed to the bearish nature of the stock market.

The Karachi Stock Exchange authorities and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) met last week to discuss the reintroduction of margin buying but it was not finalised in the meeting.

However, it was decided that a final document would be submitted to the SECP by next week.

“Following the regional markets’ trend local bourse also took a breather of 0.9 per cent after a gain of around 5 per cent in last six trading session yet maintained its 10,000 points level. With healthy volumes major profit taking was witnessed in blue chip stocks followed by low priced scrips,” said Topline Securities’ equity dealer, Samar Iqbal.

Of the 369 stocks actively traded today, 137 advanced, 208 declined and 24 remained unchanged. The value of the stocks traded today was Rs3.92 billion

Arif Habib Securities was the volume leader with 9.66 million shares traded; Its share price increased by Rs0.06 to end at Rs34.33.

National Bank of Pakistan was the second volume leader with 8.52 million shares traded; its share price increased by Rs1.39 to end at Rs69.93.

Lotte Pakistan PTA was the third volume leader with 7.47 million shares traded; its share price decreased by Rs0.24 to end at Rs8.63.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2010.