Equities moved both ways on the Lahore Stock Exchange (LSE) on Friday and finally ended in negative zone amid selling pressure on account of profit taking ahead of weekend. The LSE-25 index was marginally improved by 2.39 points and was ended at 3733.01 against 3730.62 of Thursday, while transaction volume was slightly declined to 5.605 million shares, as compared to last day volume of 5.745 million shares.
The market opened on a positive sign and showed vertical improvement during first hour of trading. Later, the market remained range-bound due to lacking buying support in first trading session. As soon as the second session started, the market could not sustain, as the investors offloaded their holdings to get out of the market at available margin.
As a result, blue chips like Pakistan Oil Fields, Attock Refinery, PSO, Adamjee Insurance, Fauji Fertiliser, Fauji Fertiliser Bin Qasim, Habib Bank, Bank Alfalah, Bank of Punjab and Arif Habib Corporation suffered losses and ended in negative column.
However, buying in Engro Corporation, MCB Bank, Allied Bank, National Bank, Sui Southern, NetSol Technologies, Lucky Cement, D.G. Khan Cement, Nishat Mills and Japan Power helped market avert more declines. The declining stocks were just ahead of advancing ones, as out of a total of 122 active companies, 26 posted gains, 32 went down, while 64 companies stayed glued to their previous levels.
Among gainers, Engro Corporation was improved by Rs 1.71, MCB Bank gained Rs 1.12 while Allied Bank and SME Leasing were up by Rs 1.00 each. In the negative column, Habib Bank lost Rs 2.72, Pakistan Oil Fields was declined by Rs 2.18, Fauji Fertiliser was depreciated by Rs 2.00, while National Foods and Attock Refinery were down by Rs 1.40 and Rs 1.06, respectively. Lotte Pakistan PTA continued to be the market leader with trading of 1.466 million shares, while National Bank stayed as runner up with 689,925 shares.