KARACHI: Trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchange remained lacklustre on Monday as investors worried about political instability, according to Standard Capital Securities.
Lack of positive triggers amidst the opposition’s quest for a vote of no confidence against the prime minister led the benchmark index to close in the red zone. In addition, global markets remained jittery after Russian war planes bombarded areas around which the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have been deployed.
“Pakistan awaits the entry of frontier-market investors, which aren’t coming due to an unstable rupee against the greenback,” the brokerage added.
At the end of trading, the KSE-100 index lost 286.44 points or 0.66 per cent on a day-on-day basis to close at 43,366.89 points.
The trading volume decreased 22.9pc to 115.1 million shares while the traded value went down 30.8pc to $20.4m on a day-on-day basis.
Sectors that took away the highest number of points from the benchmark index included oil and gas exploration (57.74 points), commercial banking (56.66 points), cement (56.54 points), technology and communication (52.21 points) and power generation and distribution (28.95 points).
Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Flying Cement Ltd (11.63m shares), Pak Elektron Ltd (8.14m shares), Ghani Global Holdings Ltd (7.02m shares), TeleCard Ltd (6.3m shares) and TPL Properties Ltd (6.1m shares).
Shares contributing positively to the index included Engro Fertilisers Ltd (41.58 points), Fauji Fertiliser Company Ltd (41.58 points), Fauji Fertiliser Bin Qasim Ltd (4.64 points), Shakarganj Ltd (4.18 points) and Pakistan Tobacco Company Ltd (3.84 points).
Stocks that took away the maximum number of points from the index included TRG Pakistan Ltd (40.12 points), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (30.01 points), United Bank Ltd (26.7 points), Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (22.72 points) and The Hub Power Company Ltd (22.13 points).
In percentage terms, the largest declines were registered by National Refinery Ltd (4.58pc), Avanceon Ltd (4.35pc), Colgate-Palmolive Pakistan Ltd (4.22pc), Unity Foods Ltd (4.06pc) and TRG Pakistan Ltd (3.89pc).
Foreign investors were net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.54m.
Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2022
