KARACHI: The stock market witnessed a range-bound session on Wednesday owing to the political unrest in the aftermath of the by-elections in Punjab coupled with the continuous depreciation in the rupee’s value against the dollar.

Arif Habib Ltd said the trading volume remained dry even though the last trading hour witnessed some value buying in the exploration and production sector.

The rupee lost 1.3 per cent value to close at 224.92 against the dollar in the third consecutive days of battering. The SBP has attributed the ongoing depreciation to the market-determined exchange rate system as well as a worldwide bull run in the value of the greenback against a basket of currencies.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 40,459.70 points, up 70.63 points or 0.17pc from a day ago.

The trading volume decreased 27.3pc to 141.7 million shares while the traded value went down 22.2pc to $20m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included TPL Proper­ties Ltd (13.37m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (10.75m shares), Cnergyico PK Ltd (7.75m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (6.31m shares) and Pakistan Refinery Ltd (5.22m shares).

Sectors contributing to the index performance include energy and exploration (73.3 points), banking (29 points), oil and gas marketing (15.8 points), power (13.6 points) and technology (11.8 points).

Shares registering the highest gains in percentage terms were First Pak Modaraba (22.5pc), Inter­national Knitwear Ltd (10.53pc), First Tri-Star Modaraba (10.27pc), Tri-Star Power Ltd (9.04pc) and Ruby Textile Mills Ltd (9.02pc).

Stocks that recorded the biggest losses in percentage terms were Gammon Pakis­tan Ltd (9.42pc), Abdullah Shah Ghazi Sugar Mills Ltd (9.01pc), Bilal Fibres Ltd (8.68pc), Cordoba Logistics and Ventures Ltd (8.61pc) and Cordoba Logistics and Ventures Ltd-R (8.42pc).

Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.05m. On the local front, mutual funds sold shares worth $2.47m.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2022