KARACHI: Bears prowled all over the stock market on Monday as investors worried over the expectations of an increase in capital gains tax in the upcoming budget.
Further speculations and uncertainty over the budget pushed investors to liquidate their positions, all of which sent the KSE-100 index reeling down by 459.57 points (1.25 per cent) to close at 36,234.69.
Volumes during the day increased by 3pc to 205 million shares, whereas value decreased by 3pc to Rs9.2 billion compared to 200m shares and Rs9.4bn on Friday.
Mutual funds sold off equities worth $9.58m, followed by Individuals who also opted out of the market with a net sale of $8.43m.
Foreign investors with unusually high net buying of $4.94m supplemented by banks picking up stocks worth $3.67m tried to absorb some of the selling from other quarters.
“Negativity today could be attributed to a decline in banking and oil sector shares,” said analyst Ahmed Saeed Khan at JS Global.
He elaborated that the oil sector retreated because of slipping global crude oil prices after Canada’s output returned to the market.
HASCOL once again closed at its upper limit as the company’s board approved establishment of a joint venture for developing oil storage/terminal facility.
Profit-taking was witnessed in the banking sector where the biggest laggards of the day were MCB (-3.55pc) and HBL (-2.80pc).
“LUCK (-2.73pc), OGDC (-1.90pc), HUBC (-1.44pc) and FFC (-1.17pc) cumulatively eroded 231 points from the index,” calculated dealers at Global Securities.
FCCL closed at its lower limit after the news of accident at the plant surfaced in the market. However, major peers of the cement-maker gained on the expectation that they will capitalise on any potential production loss of FCCL due to the accident.
Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2016
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