KARACHI: The stock market ended down by 116 points on Monday owing to narrow range trading during the day. The benchmark KSE-100 index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 47,447 points as against last Friday’s closing of 47,563 points, showing a decline of 116 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market traded in a narrow range and is slowly adjusting downwards after positing some 900 points last week.
Today’s session saw index moving between -156 points and +152 points, closing the session -116 points. Technology, Steel, Refinery and Cement sectors were particularly under selling pressure.
Institutional investors have particularly been concerned over developing situation in Afghanistan that can have an implication on otherwise peaceful law and order situation in Pakistan, as well as increasing current account deficit that can result in declining rupee parity with USD. Among scrips, WTL led the table with 70.9 million shares, followed by TREET (63.5 million) and TPL (26.5 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Cement (-38 points), Technology (-23 points), Power (-15 points), Banks (-11 points) and E&P (-10 points).
Volumes declined from 505.9 million shares to 474.9 million shares (-6 per cent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 6 to reach US$ 90.3 million as against US$ 96.5 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include WTL, TREET, TPL, GGGL and UNITY, which formed 43 per cent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include UNITY (+20 points), PSX (+20 points), MCB (+14 points), PAKT (+13 points) and HBL (+6 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include TRG (-17 points), LUCK (-17 points), BAHL (-16 points), NESTLE (-11 points) and CHCC (-11 points).
