Pakistan stocks fall on policy rate hike expectations

Pakistan stocks fall on policy rate hike expectations

KARACHI: Pakistan stocks fell by 282 points on Monday owing to concerns over hike in policy rate in the next monetary policy committee meeting.

The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) declined to 41,348 points from last Friday’s closing of 41,638 points, showing a decline of 282 points.

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Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market stayed under pressure throughout the day due to concerns over mounting inflation and expected rate hike in the upcoming monetary policy.

“The benchmark KSE-100 index opened in the green zone but soon witnessed profit-taking,” they said.

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Volumes remained dry in the main board although decent volumes were witnessed in the 3rd tier stocks.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (-72.6 points), Cement (-60.8 points), E&P (-33.2 points), Automobile Assembler (-18.9 points) and Pharmaceuticals (-12.9 points).

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Volumes decreased from 154.0 million shares to 86.6 million shares (-43.8 per cent DoD). Average traded value also decreased by 24.4 per cent to reach US$ 14.9 million as against US$ 19.7 million.

Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes are SNGP, AGL, PRL, MLCF and WTL.

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