KARACHI: The bearish spell continued to prevail at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Thursday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index plunging 411 points to close at 42,942.
The index showed mixed activity during the first few hours of the session, but saw a negative trend for the rest of the session. It reached a day’s high of 43,451 points during the first few minutes, whereas it hit a day’s low of 42,860 points near the close.
Volumes edged up, with 219.5 million shares worth Rs7.6 billion changed hands, compared to 207m shares worth Rs7.8b traded yesterday. Of the 374 traded scrips, 89 advanced, 268 declined and 17 remained unchanged.
Overall, communication scrips dominated trading with 37.2m shares traded, while the chemical and textile sectors followed with 24.1m and 23.6m shares changing hands.
The stocks started day on positive note and added 42 points to reach 43395 level in early trading. The Pakistan Stock Exchange became bearish till midday after losing 63 points to drop to 43290 level.
On Wednesday, investors turned to profit-taking with benchmark index shedding 162 points, down 0.4 percent to 43,353 points level as market paid heeds to recent political developments.
Sector wise data indicates that Cement eroded 112 points from the index, followed by Oil & Gas Marketing and Fertilizer sectors that cumulatively took away 101 index points. Trading volumes improved by 2 percent whereas the trading session was up 3 percent.
Stocks including LUCK (-2.4 percent), DGKC (-4.2 percent), SEARL (-3.9 percent), SNGP (-2.9 percent) & PSO (-2 percent) withheld 129 points from the index whereas stocks including HBL (+3.4 percent), UBL (+1.8 percent), MCB (+0.2 percent), JLICL (+3.4 percent) & ABL (+0.9 percent) added 146 points to the index gain.
