KARACHI: The stocks ended flat on Wednesday ahead of planned announcement of mini-budget by the government. The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) ended at 44,175 points as against previous day’s closing of 44,177 points, showing a decrease of 2.1 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market continued to remain choppy ahead of mini-budget.
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The government had planned to take the cabinet’s nod to the Supplementary Finance Bill, 2021 to slap highly inflationary Rs360 billion in indirect taxes.
Profit-taking was witnessed in the first trading hour then market battled between the bulls and bears throughout the day.
Main board volumes remained on the dull note whereas activity continued to remain side-ways as market witnessed hefty volumes in the 3rd tier stocks.
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Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (-28 points), Engineering (-14 points), Insurance (-11 points) and Chemicals (-6 points).
Volumes decreased from 223.1 million shares to 151.8 million shares (-32.0 per cent DoD). Traded value also decreased by 24.3 per cent to reach US$ 36.9 million as against US$ 48.7 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include GGL, UNITY, TRG, WTL and CNERGY.