Market Watch: Investors stay away after Gilani’s ouster

Trade volumes drop to five-month low, index slips 16 points.


Our Correspondent June 20, 2012

KARACHI:


The stock market crawled up on painfully low volumes as investors opted to walk away instead getting caught up in the widely expected panic selling after the premier’s ouster a day earlier.


Trade volumes plummeted to a five-month low of 47 million shares compared with Tuesday’s tally of 76 million shares. Average daily volumes last week were 86 million shares.

Local institutions were largely sidelined apart from a few instances of ‘cherry-picking’ in undervalued stocks as they expect levels to become more attractive if current political impasse continues, said JS Global Capital analyst Jawad Khan.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 0.12 per cent or 15.81 points to end at 13,667.18 point level. Oil stocks remained out of favour once again with Oil and Gas Development Company declining 0.9% to Rs 234.63 and Pakistan Petroleum falling 0.7% to Rs186.81 despite expectations of better full year payout.

Cement stocks witnessed decent volumes but closed in the red while fertiliser stocks witnessed mixed fortunes.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs263 million worth of shares, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Investors, primarily locals, are likely to continue to follow political developments, said Elixir Securities equity dealer Faisal Bilwani.

Shares of 346 companies were traded on Wednesday. At the end of the day 114 stocks closed higher, 143 declined while 89 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs1.7 billion.

Jahangir Siddiqui and Company was the volume leader with 4.7 million shares declining Rs0.31 to finish at Rs13.32. It was followed by DG Khan Cement with 3.5 million shares losing Rs0.31 to close at Rs40.03 and Hub Power Company with 2.9 million shares falling Rs0.19 to close at Rs41.80.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 21st, 2012.

COMMENTS

Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ