Stock market rangebound

KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Friday witnessed a rangebound session due to political unrest and overheated commodities cycle.

After opening on negative note, the market remained moving in both directions. In the second half the investors opted to off-load their holdings that forced the market to close in negative zone. The investor lack of interest was evident in the low trading activities as daily turnover decreased drastically.

The benchmark KSE-100 Index hit 43,966.28 points intraday high and 43,596.51 points intraday low level before closing at 43,653.33 points, down 200.29 points or 0.46 percent.

Trading activity remained thin as total daily volumes on ready counter decreased to 149.299 million shares as compared to 271.905 million shares traded on Thursday while total daily traded value on the ready counter declined to Rs 5.265 billion against previous day’s Rs 7.495 billion.

BRIndex100 decreased by 42.21 points or 0.96 percent to close at 4,351.87 points with total daily turnover of 114.310 million shares.

BRIndex30 declined by 304.96 points or 1.92 percent to close at 15,607.74 points with total daily trading volumes of 74.970 million shares.

Foreign investors however remained on the buying side with net fresh inflow of $1.224 million. Total market capitalization declined by Rs 36 billion to Rs 7.450 trillion. Out of total 332 active scrips, 205 closed in negative and 110 in positive while the value of 17 stocks remained unchanged.

TPL Properties was the volume leader with 12.272 million shares however declined by Rs 1.26 to close at Rs 22.46 followed by Pak Electron (R) that closed at Rs 1.82, down Rs 0.70 with 11.907 million shares. TPL Corp gained Rs 0.03 to close at Rs 10.06 with 9.395 million shares.

Philip Morris Pak and Systems Limited were the top gainers increasing by Rs 49.90 and Rs 38.09 respectively to close at Rs 724.90 and Rs 713.03 while Sapphire Fiber and Blessed Textile were the top losers declining by Rs 62.99 and Rs 34.99 respectively to close at Rs 777.01 and Rs 440.01.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that range bound session was observed due to political unrest and overheated commodities cycle. The market opened in the green zone and stayed volatile throughout the day. Main board activity remained gloomy. On the flip-side, activity continued to remain side-ways as market witnessed hefty volumes in the 3rd tier stocks. In the last trading hour, across the board selling was witnessed.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Commercial Banks (down 43.0 points), E&P (down 42.0 points), Cement (down 40.1 points), Power (down 30.0 points) and OMC’s (down 19.5 points).

BR Automobile Assembler Index gained 47.11 points or 0.53 percent to close at 8,900.22 points with total turnover of 592,186 million shares.

BR Cement Index declined by 56.88 points or 1.1 percent to close at 5,090.80 points with 18.645 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index decreased by 42.9 points or 0.43 percent to close at 9,849.77 points with 4.820 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index plunged by 69.29 points or 1.25 percent to close at 5,477.13 points with 6.278 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index fell by 37.07 points or 0.94 percent to close at 3,921.99 points with 4.623 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index increased by 40.41 points or 1.18 percent to close at 3,453.78 points with 29.910 million shares.

An analyst at Topline Securities said that a rangebound activity was observed at the Exchange during the first trading session, as the index juggled between positive and negative zone. However pressure was observed in the second half of trading session, as investor preferred to reduce their exposure in the market before the weekend given ongoing local political uncertainty and volatility in commodity prices on the backdrop of Russia Ukraine armed conflict.

Major contribution to the index came from SYS, INDU, MTL, NBP and UBL, as they cumulatively contributed 106 points, on the flip side LUCK, MEBL, HUBC, TRG and PPL lost value to weigh down the index by 174 points.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022