KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) Thursday continued trading in the red, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index losing 91 points to close at 45,388.
The index touched the day’s high of 45,492 at the start of trading, but traded in the negative for the most part of the day, slumping to a low of 45,123 at one point.
Trading was up to 183.4 million shares worth Rs8.5 billion. Of the 368 scrips traded, 100 advanced, 248 declined and 20 remained unchanged.
The chemical sector dominated trading with 28.9m shares traded, while commercial banking and cement followed with 26.2m and 23.1m shares traded.
The stocks started keeping previous day’s bearish note and shed another 151 points to reach 45327 level in early trading. The Pakistan Stock Exchange remained bearish till midday as the benchmark 100-index dropped 187 points to reach 45291 level.
On Wednesday, the PSX showed decline of 323 points or 0.7 percent as investors remained reluctant to trading. Banking sector remained laggard yesterday and eroded 103 points from index (as market is expecting decline in their quarterly results) followed by E&Ps (49pts) and cement (46pts). Total market participation in terms of volumes went up by 6 percent, while value enhanced by 11 percent.
Top 5 scrips including ABOT (+3.9 percent), DAWH (+1.2 percent), EFERT (+1.2 percent), BAFL (+1.6 percent) & APL (+2.3 percent) added 49 points to the index whereas stocks including HBL (-3.2 percent), LUCK (-1.3 percent), PSEL (-4.3 percent), ENGRO (-1.1 percent) & DGKC (-2.7 percent) withheld 181 points from the index gain. Altern energy (ALTN) posted earnings of Rs1.34 per share for 3QFY18 vs loss of Rs0.07/share last year, due to increase in revenue by 124 percent YoY to Rs8.3b and decrease in finance cost by 55 percent YoY.
