KARACHI: The stock market on Monday remained depressed with the KSE-100 index losing 33.23 points (0.08 per cent) to close at 41,030.77.

The index marked intraday high and low of 41,232.17 and 40,9280.27 points. Investors’ lack of interest was signified by abysmally low turnover.

The volume was down 35pc over the previous session to 75m shares, while the traded value decreased 33pc to Rs4.54bn. Foreign investors were net sellers of equity worth $0.74 million.

A senior broker said that the foreign fund managers’ interest was unlikely to rejuvenate until the true value of the rupee against the dollar gets determined and adjusted. Local retail investors and institutions were all net sellers and so were the brokers who liquidated stocks of $1.05m from Brokers Proprietary Trading. Noticeably, the mutual funds accumulated stocks worth $2.97m.

Major sellers in the previous sessions and sitting on stock pile of cash, mutual funds were thought to be cherry-picking stocks, now at cheap valuations.

Although the broader market remained listless, the oil and gas exploration sector garnered interest on back of international prices hitting their highest since July 2015 as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince cemented his power over the weekend through an anti-corruption crackdown.

Major gainers were OGDC, which went up 2.3pc, PPL 1.4pc, DAWH 2.9pc, MCB Bank 1pc and POL 0.9pc, while HBL lost 1.7pc, Nestle 3.6pc, PAKT 5pc, PSO 1.4pc and UBL 0.7pc.

Positive sentiments were witnessed in the textile sector as Nishat Mills gained 1.08pc and Nishat Chunian 0.72pc on the news that the government had released Rs14bn for the implementation of phase-I of the Prime Minister’s Export Incentives Package.

Refineries, ATRL fell 2.53pc, NRL 2.04pc and PRL 1.26pc.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2017