KARACHI: It was a gloomy start to the week with the KSE-100 index showing a loss of 177.88 points or 0.56 per cent to close at 31,316.96 on Monday as investors decided to book profit and move to the sidelines.

The activity took place mostly in sideboard items as the traded value declined 7pc to Rs8.93 billion, while turnover increased 17.6pc to 200 million shares. All the 13 stocks listed on the heavyweight ‘oil & gas’ sector lost values on Monday.

Local institutional and individual investors played safe, though foreign investors switched portfolios to maximise gains.

Gross buying by foreigners stood at $7.63m on Mon­day against gross sale worth $4.71m, resulting in net inflow at $2.92m.

Cements were the foreigners’ favourite on Monday which saw net investment of $2.3m; followed by chemicals $1.7m and banks $0.6m.

Retail nervous investors who couldn’t stand the heat generated by political parties decided to wait until things cooled off, which some brokers said did not look to be anytime this week as Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) drums up for mob support to its Nov 30 mass protest in Islamabad. The decision by the prime minister to make a speech to the nation on Monday evening was an­­other dampener on the sentiments as investors began to wonder if things were worse than they looked.

Analysts at ‘Alternate Re­­search’ commented: “Bench­mark index remained in the red zone for almost the whole day with an intra-day low of 31,303 points.”

The analysts believed that the furor was created by PTI as pundits worried over a major political deadlock with rising security concerns.

Analysts at brokerage Aba Ali Habib Securities stated that the news regarding the deferment of in­­crease in gas prices helped the index to open on a positive note.

However, heavy selling in oil & gas stock pushed the index into the red.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014