KARACHI: The national stock exchange witnessed range-bound activity on Friday in the first half of the trading session with the index swinging between positive and negative zones.

According to Topline Securities, the market came under pressure in the second half as investors chose to reduce their exposure before the weekend. Stockholders scaled back their portfolios amid political uncertainty on the local front as well as volatility in international commodity prices on the back of the Russian-Ukraine armed conflict, the brokerage said.

At the end of trading, the KSE-100 index lost 200.29 points or 0.46 per cent on a day-on-day basis to close at 43,653.33 points.

The trading volume decreased 45.1pc to 149.3 million shares while the traded value went down 29.7pc to $29.5m on a day-on-day basis.

Sectors that took away the highest number of points from the benchmark index included banking (43 points), oil and gas exploration (41.96 points), cement (40.09 points), power generation and distribution (29.98 points) and oil and gas marketing (19.5 points).

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included TPL Properties Ltd (12.27m shares), Pak Elektron Ltd (11.9m shares), TPL Corporation Ltd (9.39m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (9.04m shares) and Flying Cement Ltd (7.84m shares).

Shares contributing positively to the index included Systems Ltd (77.04 points), United Bank Ltd (10.04 points), MCB Bank Ltd (8.3 points), Indus Motor Company Ltd (7.14 points) and Millat Tractors Ltd (6.65 points).

Stocks that took away the maximum number of points from the index included Meezan Bank Ltd (47.17 points), Lucky Cement Ltd (42.14 points), The Hub Power Company Ltd (29.21 points), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (20.19 points) and TRG Pakistan Ltd (20.02 points).

In percentage terms, shares recording the largest declines were Unity Foods Ltd (4.32pc), Kohinoor Textile Mills Ltd (4.1pc), Pak Elektron Ltd (4.01pc), Meezan Bank Ltd (3.5pc) and Avanceon Ltd (2.9pc).

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2022