KARACHI: The market was in a tight bear hug on Monday with the KSE-100 index pulling back by 322.52 points or 1.09 per cent.

The index sank by more than 369 points to intraday low, but somehow managed to wrap-up the session at 29,383.13.

Stockbrokers gave various reasons for the steep decline in stock prices. Foremost, the investors who had thought that the sit-in protests by political parties in Islamabad was nothing but a storm in tea cup over the last few weeks, had to change their view after witnessing the massive protest rally of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Sunday in Lahore.

Some thought that foreigners, who had been attracted to the country’s stock market after the elections on the lure of an investment friendly government of PML-N, may change their view.

The net sale of equities by overseas investors on the last day of previous week and very little inflow over the week further lent credence to such fear.

To make matters worse, foreigners were again net sellers on Monday, though of marginal $1.21 million worth stocks.

The start of hearing by the Supreme Court in the petition challenging PM Sharif’s legitimacy to hold office was also alarming.

Altogether, investors thought it wiser to take profit and watch the show from the sidelines.

All ten volume leaders closed in the red. Although shares across the board went down, the major impact came from drop in heavy weights as OGDCL fell 1.7pc, MCB was down 1.2pc and Lucky Cement declined 1.5pc.

Analyst Ovais Ahsan pointed out that the volume remained relatively low with 91m shares traded versus the year to date average daily traded volume of 204m shares.

Brokerage Sunrise Capital worked out that in the banking sector UBL, NBP, HBL, FABL and BAFL dropped by 0.53pc, 1.73pc, 0.68pc, 2.09pc and 1.76pc, respectively. Gul Ahmed textile and Nishat Chunian lost 1.52pc and 4.98pc, respectively.

In the cement sector, LUCK, LPCL, FCCL and MLCF depreciated by 1.49pc, 0.95pc, 0.52pc and 1.29pc, respectively.

In the chemical sector ENGRO and EFERT dropped by 1.73pc and 0.09pc.

Published in Dawn, September 30th , 2014