KARACHI: The stock market snapped three-day rally on Monday as the KSE-100 index relinquished 604 points (1.44 per cent) to close at 41,484 points.

Market participants advanced several reasons for the decline. Those included political uncertainty; deterioration in economic numbers and fading confidence on anything concrete emerging out of stakeholders’ recommendations to the prime minister regarding a market support fund of Rs20 billion.

More pressure was brought to bear on the market on account of rollover week for deliverable futures contracts as weak holders opted to book gains on trading positions.

The trading figures released by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Ltd showed that while mutual funds continued with their sell-off valued at $4.70m, major selling was in the ‘brokers proprietary trading’ account amounting to $7.99m.

All of that selling was picked up by individuals who bought stocks worth $11.95m. It can only be hoped that the small investors have not been trapped lured by the noise of a market support fund, which may or may not materialise.

The volume dipped 41pc over the previous day to 153m shares, while the traded value was down 38pc to Rs8.04bn.

Elixir Securities commented that among the worst performers, oils stood second in line with all names seeing a red finish despite an increase in crude prices over the weekend. Overall, mainboard names fetched limited institutional interest while second- and third- tier names also saw limited activity as retail investors traded cautiously on start of futures rollover week.

Steel sector witnessed interest on the back of 19pc definitive five-year anti-dumping duty on steel re-bars imported from China. Some of the major steel stocks ASTL, MUGHAL and Ittefaq Steel hit their upper circuits.

According to Topline Securities, the top five stocks that wiped off most of the index gains included Engro Corp, which plunged 4.7pc, Lucky Cement 4.4pc, PPL 2.7pc, OGDC 2.1pc and DGKC 5pc, eroding 278 points.

On the flip side, SNGP gained 3.5pc, ASTL 5pc, AICL 1.9pc, EFoods 3.9pc and UBL 0.2pc, adding 46 points to index.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2017