KARACHI: The stock market came under pressure on Friday as investors resorted to profit-taking.
Arif Habib Ltd said market activity remained dull in the first few hours of trading owing to the absence of triggers. In the later part of the trading session, however, across-the-board profit-taking pushed down share prices and the index closed in the red zone. The refinery sector remained in the limelight even though main-board volumes were dull.
Weekly inflation measured by the Sensitive Price Index rose to 42.3 per cent for the week that ended on August 18. The latest inflation figure put a dampener on investors’ sentiments as they worry about the expected increase in the benchmark interest rate in the next monetary policy announcement due on Aug 22.
As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 43,270.65 points, down 210.85 points or 0.48pc from a day ago.
The trading volume decreased 50.7pc to 306.2 million shares while the traded value went down 39.1pc to $29.8m on a day-on-day basis.
Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Hascol Petroleum Ltd (71.46m shares), Pakistan Refinery Ltd (19.45m shares), Bank of Punjab Ltd (19.14m shares), Cnergyico PK Ltd (18.38m shares) and WorldCall Telecom Ltd (17.8m shares).
Sectors contributing to the index performance included banking (-81.6 points), cement (-56.4 points), power (-33.3 points), tobacco (-11.2 points) and exploration and production (-10.3 points).
Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were Siemens Pakistan Engineering Ltd (Rs45), Shield Corporation Ltd (Rs21.14), Gatron Industries Ltd (Rs18.65), Indus Motor Company Ltd (Rs13.90) and Dynea Pakistan Ltd (Rs11.48).
Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan Ltd (Rs61), Sapphire Textile Mills Ltd (Rs55.50), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs43.89), Pakistan Tobacco Company Ltd (Rs35) and ICI Pakistan Ltd (Rs9.72).
Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.83m.
Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2022
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