KARACHI: The stock market on Monday nosedived by 938 points owing to scheduled budget announcement and arrest of Asif Ali Zardari, leader of Pakistan People’s Party.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 34,568 points as against 35,505 points showing a decline of 938 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that besides the anticipation of poor macro-economic statistics in the soon-to-be-released Economic Survey, budget woes kept the market under heavy selling pressure.
Market opened negative 140 points and within minutes declined close to 500 points without any significant volume. Selling was observed across the board, which was further accentuated by Asif Zardari’s rejection of permanent bail by Islamabad High Court.
By the end of session, the index saw decline of 1037 points and closed -938 points. Power sector led the volumes table with around 20 million shares (mainly contributed by KEL ~18.5 million), and followed by Banking Sector with 14.6 million shares (BOP ~7 million) and Cement with 7.2 million shares.
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-240 points), E&P (-159 points), Fertilizer (-119 points), Cement (-104 points) and O&GMCs (-70 points).
Volumes declined significantly from 125 million shares to 92 million shares (-26 percent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 26 percent to reach US$ 23.5 million as against US$ 31.6 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include KEL, BOP, UNITY, LOTCHEM and OGDC, which formed 40 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively include KEL (+11 points), FABL (+1pt), THALL (+1pt), APL (+0 points) and SHEL (+0 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include ENGRO (-63 points), HBL (-61 points), PPL (-60 points), OGDC (-58 points) and LUCK (-54 points).
