KARACHI: The stock market fell by 257 points on Monday in lackluster trading activities duty the day. The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 47,429 points as against last Friday’s closing of 47,686 points, showing a decline of 257 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that post closure of financial year end, the market begin receding, resulting in a loss of 311 points during the session and closed -257 points.
Lack of obvious near term trigger caused the lackluster activity in the market whereby investors are concerned about beginning of earnings season, due to start end August.
Selling pressure was evident across the board, with focus on Cement, Steel, Technology, Refinery and E&P sectors. OGDC became exception to the selling, and saw active trading with range bound price uptick. SNGP posted its results with a dividend payout that attracted investors to build position and realized price gain. Among scrips, WTL led the table with 55.5 million shares, followed by HASCOL (39.6 million) and KEL (29.4 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (-76 points), Technology (-23 points), E&P (-23 points), Tobacoo (-21 points), Fertilizer (-16 points) and Power (+25 points).
Volumes declined from 563.8 million shares to 494.5 million shares (-12 per cent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 6 per cent to reach US$ 97.2 million as against US$ 103.2 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include WTL, HASCOL, KEL, BYCO and TPL, which formed 36 per cent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include HUBC (+27 points), SNGP (+12 points), EFERT (+11 points), SCBPL (+10 points) and BAFL (+9 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include LUCK (-39 points), PAKT (-21 points), ENGRO (-17 points), HBL (-17 points) and PPL (-15 points).
