KARACHI: The equity market fell by 22 points on Wednesday after witnessed over 600 points gain earlier in the day.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 37,673 points as against 37,696 points showing a decline of 22 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market opened on a positive note today and gained 637 points during the session, only to see Saudi and UAE signaling crude production ramp-up in April.
That caused E&P sector sliding again, with PPL trading near yesterday’s lower circuit breaker.
Cement sector bore selling pressure due to profit booking, which caused index coming down and erasing all the gains, closing the session 22 points down. Cement sector topped the volume with 65.6M shares, followed by Banks (22.5 million) and O&GMCs (18.8 million). Among scrips, MLCF posted 17.6 million shares, followed by FCCL (15.9 million) and HASCOL (13.4 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (+90 points), Pharma (+20 points), Fertilizer (-26 points), E&P (-25 points), O&GMCs (-19 points).
Volumes declined from 274.8 million shares to 217.6 million shares (-21 percent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 29 percent to reach US$ 74.7 million as against US$ 105.6 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include MLCF, FCCL, HASCOL, PPL and BOP, which formed 31 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively include HBL (+27 points), UBL (+25 points), BAHL (+23 points), BAFL (+16 points) and SEARL (+13 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include PPL (-14 points), ENGRO (-11 points), FFC (-11 points), MLCF (-9 points), and LUCK (-9 points).
