KARACHI: Pakistani shares snapped a two-day recovery spree on Thursday as investors resorted to profit-taking in a volatile session, dragging the benchmark index below 79,000 despite a bullish start on better corporate results.

Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said the stock market witnessed an across-the-board downturn due to political uncertainty.

He said investor concerns about a settlement of $15 billion due to Chinese IPPs, a surging power tariff impacting industrial earnings, political noise over banning opposition, and a weak rupee led to a bearish close.

Topline Securities Ltd said the selling spree towards the last hours of the session wiped out early gains. During the session, blue-chip stocks like Bank Al-Habib, Hub Power, Systems Ltd, MCB Bank and Meezan Bank negatively contributed 396 points to the index. Conversely, PSO, Pakistan Oilfield and Attock Petroleum saw some buying interest as they added 40 points.

As a result, the benchmark index hit an intraday high of 79,776.96 points and a low of 78,330.59. However, the index settled at 78,469.33 after losing 927.68 points or 1.17 per cent on a day-on-day basis.

The overall trading volume fell 15.42pc to 327.27 million shares. The traded value, however, rose 2.57pc to Rs15.28bn on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Fauji Fertiliser (28.45m shares), Hascol Petroleum (17.86m shares), Dewan Motors (16.45m shares), Quice Food Industries (13.44m shares) and PIA Holding Company (12.50m shares).

The shares registering the most significant increases in their share prices in absolute terms were PIA Holding Ltd [B] (Rs81.21), Rafhan Maize (Rs69.76), Reliance Cotton (Rs63.00), Ismail Industries (Rs42.60) and Pakistan Tobacco (Rs20.84).

The companies registering significant decreases in their share prices in absolute terms were Unilever Foods (Rs69.50), Nestle Pakistan (Rs63.04), Exide Pakistan (Rs44.76), Lucky Core Industries (Rs43.55) and Hoechst Pak (Rs32.93).

Foreign investors remained net sellers as they sold shares worth $0.05m.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2024