KARACHI: It was a roller coaster ride at the stock market on Thursday with the KSE-100 index closing down by 33.91 points, or 0.10 per cent, at 33,456.74.

The index started on a positive note with the buyers carrying it up to intra-day high by 222 points. Yet later in the day, investors decided to take profit which pulled down the index to a steep plunge by 91 points, though it bounced back and showed a bit of recovery.

The corporate results toge­ther with the investors’ interest and speculations about the election had a profound effect on the day’s trading.

Aggregate volume stood at 348m shares valued at Rs17 billion on Thursday, compared to month-to-date average volume at 279m shares of Rs14.5bn.

Dealers at brokerage Topline Securities said: “Decent activity was seen in Pakistan State Oil and Hub Power after the government expressed its intention to cap circular debt at Rs250bn.”

Lucky Cement and DG Khan Cement announced better than expected March 2015 results. LUCK and DGKC gained 1.3pc and 1.7pc, while MLCF declined by 2.2pc.

Foreign investors bought shares worth $24 million and sold shares of $22.4m, resulting in net purchases of shares valued at $1.60m. Almost all of that was invested in banking sector. Month-to-date foreigners were net buyers of $13.38m worth shares, foreign portfolio year-to-date stood at $117.71m.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corporation commented that stocks closed lower amid institutional profit-taking in overbought market. Support in selected banking and oil stocks led the index to close above session lows.

Analysts at brokerage Sunrise Capital observed that mixed sentiments prevailed in banking sector with BOP, AKBL and HBL surged up by 1.82pc, 1.79pc and 0.62pc while NBP and MCB closed down by 2.43pc and 1.8pc.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2015

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