KARACHI: The equity market ended down by 108 points on Thursday as the trading activity remained range bound owing to political uncertainty.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 45,574 points as against previous day’s closing of 45,682 points, showing a decline of 108 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market traded range bound oscillating between +149 points and -163 points, ending the session -108 points.
Political uncertainty continued playing with sentiments today besides selling in E&P stocks due to concern over crude oil price in international market and liquidity crunch affecting operational performance of underlying companies.
Banking stocks followed suit with negative price performance. Besides, Technology stocks saw selling pressure in TRG that put additional pressure on the Index.
BYCO, which saw significant share transfers in NDMs yesterday, realized healthy volumes with price uptick in the regular market, topping the volume leaders.
HASCOL realized an upper circuit closing for the second consecutive day. Among scrips, BYCO led the table followed by WTL (77.7 million) and HASCOL (59.5 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-102 points), E&P (-48 points), Technology (-25 points), Cement (-13 points) and Engineering (-7 points).
Volumes increased from 578.3 million shares to 784.0 million shares (+36 percent DoD). Average traded value on the other hand remained at US$ 135.7 million as against US$ 135.5 million the other day.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include BYCO, WTL, HASCOL, KEL and PIBTL, which formed 45 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include PIBTL (+15 points), HASCOL (+14 points), SEARL (+13 points), COLG (+13 points) and DAWH (+9 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include HBL (-49 points), OGDC (-24 points), HMB (-21 points), MCB (-17 points) and SYS (-17 points).
