KARACHI: The bearish trend entered another week as the Pakistan Stock Exchange Monday opened negative and lost psychological barrier of 31,000, shedding 54.82 points to reach 30956.95 points level in early trading.
Last week, the stock market continued its downward slide as volatile global markets and oil prices weighed heavily on the bourse, resulting in the benchmark KSE-100 index falling by 452 points (1.4%).
The week opened on a strong note on the back of a sharp rebound in oil prices over the weekend which resulted in the KSE-100 index shooting up by 464 points (1.5%) on Monday. However, the sentiment changed quickly the following day with profit-taking kicking in, after the index reached an intra-day high of 32,159, to eventually close down by 255 points at 31,673.
The KSE-100’s bearish streak continued throughout the rest of the week with oil prices again heading downwards and negative sector-specific news flows. The index would shed another 661 points (2%) in the remaining three days to end the week at 31,012. Average daily volumes fell 12% to 123.9 million shares traded per day, while average daily values also fell 17% to Rs6.62 billion per day. The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s market capitalisation stood at Rs6.53 trillion ($62.4 billion) at the end of the week.
