KARACHI: The stock market ended flat on Friday as lack of interest by investors in blue chips.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 37,521 points against 37,516 points showing an increase of 5 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that after yesterday’s slide of around 500 points, the 100 index traded did slip another 209 points during the day but closed positive 5 points (unadjusted).
Interloop Limited (ILP) debuted at PSX with 14.3 million traded volume and closed slightly below its opening / subscription price of 46.10.
ILP also topped the volumes table, followed by UNITY right shares which registered a volume of 13.7 million shares.
Investors didn’t take much interest in blue chips, which is evident from the fact that none of the blue chips find place in top 10 volumes chart.
Altogether, mainstream sectors like Cement and Banks ranked 4th & 5th in terms of traded volume. FM’s clarification regarding rupee:dollar parity failed to entice investors and overall investor sentiment remained low.
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-26 points), Pharma (-7 points), Chemical (-7 points), E&P (+10 points), Engineering (+9 points).
Volumes declined further from 127.9 million shares to 101.7 million shares (-21 percent DoD). Average traded value on the contrary increased from US$ 23.9 million to US$ 26.6 million (+11 percent DoD).
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include ILP, UNITYR1, KEL, WTL, and PAEL, which formed 46 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively include NESTLE (+11 points), MARI (+9 points), PAKT (+9 points), EFERT (+8 points), and KEL (+8 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include MCB (-17 points), KAPCO (-10 points), HBL (-8 points), FABL (-6 points) and FFC (-6 points).
