KARACHI: The share market posted a decline of 256 points on Monday owing to slippage in Pak Rupee (PKR) value against the dollar.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) ended at 44,817 points as against last Friday’s closing of 45,074 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that market posted gains of 163 points earlier in the session, but faced the onslaught sooner which caused the erosion of these gains and netting a loss of 732 points during the session.
Leveraged positions mostly got thrashing, however, resumption of PKR slippage was another reason cited for the panic selling in market.
Volumes remained thin compared with the activity in recent times, where ample volumes were witnessed in blue chips.
Fertilizer, E&P, O&GMCs, Cement stocks saw quick paced buying by the end of session that helped the index pull back. Among scrips, UNITY topped the volumes with 34.4 million shares, followed by WTL (32.6 million) and BYCO (31.9 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-101 points), Refeinery (-34 points), Paper and Board (-25 points), Inv Banks (-23 points) and Pharma (-20 points).
Volumes declined from 369.5 million shares to 301.4 million shares (-19 per cent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 5 per cent to reach US$ 65.9 million as against US$ 69.5 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITY, WTL, BYCO, HUMNL and BAFL, which formed 40 per cent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include SYS (+50 points), FFC (+18 points), MTL (+8 points), KTML (+7 points) and EPCL (+7 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include TRG (-51 points), HBL (-51 points), MEBL (-29 points), UBL (-18 points) and PSO (-16 points).
