KARACHI: Opened with positive note, the stocks remained bearish all the day and closed shedding 30.08 points to dropped to 40924.14 points level on Wednesday.
The stocks recorded the highest trading level of 41065.00 points and lowest level of 40668.82 points, with the volume of about 506 million shares and value of 12.45 billion. As many as 411 companies were active; of which 201 advanced, 194 declined and 16 remained unchanged.
Dost Steel (R) was the volume leader with 135.95 million shares, shedding Rs 0.04 to finish at Rs 3.91. It was followed by BoP with 65 million shares, gaining Rs 1 to end at Rs 17.45 and Aisha Steel Mill with 25 million shares, losing Rs 0.52 to close at Rs 13.46.
The top three gainers were Sapphire Tex with price per share of 1026.14 (48.86), Ferozsons (Lab) with price per share of 890.05 (42.42) and Ghandhara Ind share of 667.90 (32.04).
The top three losers were Rafhan Maize with price per share of 7700 (-100), Khyber Tobacco with price per share of 826.99 (-43.47) and Sapphire Fiber per share of 892.05 (-31.33).
Earlier, the stocks tried to recoup some points and added 36.51 points to reach 40990.73 points level in early trading. The Pakistan Stock Exchange dropped the early gains and lost 229.49 points to reach 40724.73 points level till midday.
On Tuesday, the negativity prevailed at the stock market on second consecutive day as the 100-share index shed another 328.50 points (0.80%) to close at 40,954.22 points amid rising political uncertainty.
The oil sector refused to follow the trend of global crude oil prices that traded comfortably above $50/barrel. Profit-taking was witnessed in the aforementioned sector, where OGDC (down 0.72%) and PSO (1.29%) were the biggest index movers of the sector. The cement sector was the major laggard of the day as the sector was down around 2.37% on the back of rising global coal prices. MLCF (down 4.02%) and LUCK (1.69%) were the major index movers of the cement sector.
Overall, volumes increased by 1.06% to 383m shares, while value rose by 1.5% to Rs13.1b/$125m. Of total 451 active companies in the market, 291 closed in red, 137 in green while 23 remained unchanged. BOP and TPL were the most traded scrips of the index with 52m and 19m shares respectively.
