KARACHI: The share market fell by 424 points on Thursday as profit taking witnessed which resulted in selling pressure during the day.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 33,304 points as against 33,728 points showing a decline of 424 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market opened on a negative note today and could only manage to pull back into green for a brief time, before plunging due to selling pressure.
Regardless of what the international crude prices are trading at, local E&P and O&GMCs which responded positively to the ascend in international crude prices last week, remained oblivious to further price gains.
Profit booking is clearly on investors mind, who have so far been cashing out from Fertilizer, Cement, E&P and O&GMCs.
Banks, on the other hand, which have weathered the flow from foreign investors (possibly due to MSCI rebalancing), showed initial signs of recovery on the prospect of expectation of status quo in the upcoming monetary policy.
This is reflected by the yield change in secondary market for 10yr PIBs, which marked a low of 7.64 percent on April 17, 2020 and have since then recovered to 8.23 percent today, indicating that there may be a status quo on policy rate.
Cement sector led the volumes with 41.8 million shares, followed by Banks (19.1 million) and O&GMCs (18.9 million). Among scrips, HASCOL topped with 16.1 million shares, followed by MLCF (12.6 million) and DGKC (8.2 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include E&P (-127 points), Cement (-56 points), Power (-54 points), Fertilizer (-41 points) and O&GMCs (-39 points).
Volumes declined from 208.9 million shares to 175.8 million shares (-16 percent DoD). Average traded value on the other increase by 4 percent to reach US$ 46.8 million as against US$ 45.1 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include HASCOL, MLCF, DGKC, UNITY and FCCL, which formed 30 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include UBL (+28 points), HBL (+24 points), EFUG (+11 points), SYS (+8 points) and MTL (+5 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include OGDC (-51 points), PPL (-48 points), HUBC (-44 points), LUCK (-34 points), and BAHL (-28 points).
