KARACHI: The stock market witnessed a massive fall of 912 points on Thursday as selling pressure continued over negative sentiments.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 42,780 points as against previous day’s closing of 43,692 points, showing a decline of 912 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market saw another thrashing of 1003 points after posting an increase of 199 points during the session.
Selling pressure kept building up by the end of session, where several stocks hit lower circuits, however, periodic buying contained the losses to -912 points by the end of session.
Cement sector saw buying activity, whereas Banks, E&P, Power, O&GMC sectors contributed most to the decline in Index.
Though FBR gave clarification on withdrawal of tax exemptions, the investors remained perturbed on anticipation of levy of additional taxes that made the leveraged investors closing their positions at market rates rather than meeting the margin requirements.
In addition, tomorrow’s senate elections also had bearing on today’s session, where investors preferred staying away from the market than bearing the brunt from any surprise as was witnessed in the previous week.
Among scrips, UNITY led the volumes with 34.8 million shares, followed by TRG (27.1 million) and HUMNL (21.4 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-139 points), E&P (-118 points), Technology (-98 points), Textile (-74 points) and Cement (-70 points).
Volumes increased from 363.2 million shares to 406 million shares (+12 percent DoD). Average traded value, on the contrary, declined by 16 percent to reach US$ 112.8 million as against US$ 134.6 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITY, TRG, HUMNL, WTL and KEL, which formed 30 percent of total volumes.
