KARACHI: The stock market witnessed a decline of 359 points on Friday as across the board selling pressure observed during the day.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 47,604 points as against previous day’s close of 47,963 points, showing a decline of 359 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the rollover week ended with market shedding 486 points during the session and closing the index -359 points.
Overnight intimation from MSCI regarding possible downgrade of Pakistan from MSCI Emerging Market Index to MSCI Frontier market Index, had investors perplexed on the upgrade of stocks in the recent MSCI review particularly LUCK and TRG, which were added to the Standard and Small index respectively.
In addition, Finance Minister’s final budget speech had positive surprise for auto stocks.
Selling pressure was observed across the board, with concentration towards Banks, E&P and Cement sector stocks. Among scrips, WTL topped the volumes with 142 million shares, followed by BYCO (53.7 million) and PACE (44.9 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-114 points), Cement (-101 points), E&P (-63 points), Pharma (-40 points) and Inv Banks (-28 points).
Volumes increased from 638.8 million shares to 761.3 million shares (+19 per cent DoD). Average traded value also increased by 32 per cent to reach US$ 138.0 million as against US$ 103.8 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include WTL, BYCO, PACE, TPL and KEL, which formed 39 per cent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include PSEL (+29 points), FCEPL (+14 points), SYS (+12 points), ANL (+7 points) and HUBC (+7 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include LUCK (-66 points), HBL (-50 points), UBL (-36 points), PPL (-20 points) and DAWH (-19 points).
