Market watch: Bourse declines as investors book profits

KSE’s benchmark 100-share index falls 41 points.

KARACHI: Investors decided to book profits on the last trading session of the week ahead of the Supreme Court hearing from Monday. 

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 0.27 per cent or 41.37 points to end at the 15,039.18 points level.

The stock market carried over positive sentiment from the previous day and managed to post an intra day high of 15,162 points, however, selling pressure in the second half pulled the bourse down.

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf is due to appear before the Supreme Court on Monday over his failure to comply with orders to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Decline in global equity markets and loan repayment of $397 million to International Monetary Fund also fuelled negative investor sentiment, said JS Global Capital analyst Shakir Padela.

Trade volumes surged to 306 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 221 million shares.

Major losers of the day were the cements stocks which had been leading the rally previously. Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs106 million worth of shares, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Pakistan Telecom­munication Company Limited rose to its upper limit of Re1 to close at Rs15.29.

Shares of 323 companies were traded on Friday. At the end of the day 171 stocks closed higher, 120 declined while 32 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs5.0 billion.

Lafarge Pakistan was the volume leader with 38.9 million shares that closed unchanged at Rs5.7. It was followed by Flying Cement with 26.5 million shares firming Re1.0 to close at Rs4.9 and Fauji Cement with 24.7 million shares declining Re0.1 to close at Rs6.8.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2012.