June 11, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 06, 1429

KARACHI, June 10: The market on Tuesday remained unsettled amid conflicting rumours about fiscal steps in the budget and political tensions but managed to finish well above the session’s lows on late flurry of buy-stops at the dips on selected counters.

The session’s volatility may be gauged by the highly erratic movement of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) 100-share index, which at one stage having fallen by 285 points managed to recoup a good partly of them on strong support at the dips, analysts said.

The lawyers’ long march was also viewed as a negative factor amid fears of law and order situation.

It finally ended with a clipped loss of 30.19 points at 12,878.04 after having fallen to session’s low of 12,687.40 points. The free-float 30-share index on the other hand, managed to close with a fractional gain of 5.41 points at 15,035.74.

Late strong buying at the lower level in the leading banking shares, notably MCB Bank, and National Bank and some oil shares, including OGDC, and Pakistan Petroleum, significantly added to the recovery in it from the mid-session lows.

The general perception is that investors may have some rethinking on the economic projections for the new fiscal year and their impact on the share market, notably a fall in the growth rate to 5.5 per cent, high rate of inflation at 11 per cent and a massive rise in trade deficit, but some other positive points may keep the market afloat, said a leading analyst.

“But investors are certainly worried as all the brokers have gone mad for the last couple of weeks,” said a small investor, commenting on the ‘Taaq’ (odd) closing rates of most of the shares, adding “Do they want us to remain busy calculating Taaq, such as 0.01, 0.41, 0.07 paisa, or closing of Rs12.91, Rs111.39 plus and minus of the day like schoolchildren, pity on them.”

Never in the history of the stock trading, there had ever been a terrible galore of Taaq closing rates, he said, adding: “I fear computer network may also refuse to take in that data one day.”

Where has gone the normal “juft” closing rates of Rs12.50, Rs13, Rs70.80.

“Having two years exemption on Capital Gains Tax and statue quo on the Capital Value and withholding taxes, investors have nothing to worry about the fiscal measures in tomorrow’s national budget,” analyst said, adding “there may be some other supporting steps for the share business as the new managers are not inclined to disturb the present status quo on the bourses.”

But no one could deny the investor worries about the political tensions, which did not allow investors to play freely in a market