KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) Wednesday opened keeping previous day’s bearish note and dropped 169 points to reach 45811 points level in early trading.
On Tuesday, the stocks continued its downward trajectory on political uncertainty as benchmark index plummeted by 486 points and closed at 45,980 points. Heavyweight stocks of the commercial banking sector dragged the KSE 100-index down by 56 points. UBL (down 1.49%), HBL (0.74%), ABL (1.02%) and NBP (0.33%) were among the major laggards from the sector.
AKBL (down 4.39%) from the banking sector shed points in trading session. The bank also announced EPS of Rs2.28 for 1H2017. On the other hand, PSO (up 5%) hit its upper circuit as the company announced DPS of Rs15 (FY17: Rs25) with 20% bonus shares with its FY17 results. POL (up 1.20%) and PPL (0.19%) from the E&P sector gained points against the market sentiment as oil in the global market steadied after news of lower crude supplies from Saudi Arabia, said analyst at JS Global. Steel sector also lost points due to selling pressure where ISL (down 4.79%), ASTL (3.63%), and ASL (down 3.93%) were losers from the aforementioned sector.
Traded volumes were down 15% to 206m shares whereas traded value was down 13% to Rs8.8b. Scrips of total 384 active companies traded in the session, of which 295 closed in negative, 75 in positive while 14 remained unchanged.
