KARACHI, July 10: Cheerless conditions prevailed on the stock market on Wednesday as leading players, including the institutional traders, were conspicuous by their absence for no apparent bearish reason. The index was off by 1.52 points at 1,793.98 points.

Investors have their own reasons to enter or exit the trading arena in abnormal trading conditions, though there is no denying the fact that positive background news do play their due stimulating roll sometime for longer duration and some time giving a mere psychological boost to the share values.

Extremely narrow price movements, mostly within few paisa may not be a prelude to a big sell-off or a smart turnaround do reflect investor reservations on certain counts, some brokers said.

But at this stage there is none. Military standoff with India is there, while local political polarization appears to be heading for a big showdown.

As a result, turnover figure fell to a low ebb as leading investors kept to the sidelines allowing jobbers and short-term to play according to their whims.

Stock analysts are never tired to give conflicting reasons behind the current sluggishness but all appear to be well off the mark. Some say the market is consolidating around the current levels before a grand turnaround, others claim investors are awaiting the dividend announcements from some big ones to resume new year buying and so on. “The simple thing is that there are no buyers either institutional or genuine,” says a broker, adding “it needs no wisdom to fathom the causes behind it, including the political ones.”

However, it is satisfying to note that the market is not standing at the mouth of a volcano and everybody should thank it is in a “pretty safe territory, which could prove a launching pad for a journey to the coveted index level of 2,000”.

No one could lure the prospective investors into the net, including an attractive bait of lower levels until he himself decides to ride the bandwagon and the timing, which suits him.

“There is no dearth of funds but there are no safe havens on which investors could rely and where their capital is safe and could grow,” says a member of the KSE.

The KSE 100-share index suffered a fresh fractional decline of 1.52 points at 1,793.98 as compared to 1,795.50 a day earlier sans massive activity in any of the volume leaders.

Volume figure fell to a six-month low of 30m shares, about 75 per cent of which confined to a dozen liquid shares, the all-time low being at 16m shares in a single session touched late last year. Losers led gainers by a big margin at 121 to 88, with 78 shares holding on to the last levels.

National Bank resisted fresh decline ahead of its board meeting aided by reports of higher earnings but failed to take the market along with it in the plus column or generate sympathetic buying on other counters.

Among the prominent gainers, IGI Insurance, Shadab Textiles, Sunrays Textiles, Ferozsons, Hilal Flour Mills, Gillette Pakistan, Zulfiqar Industries and Treet Corporation were leading, which rose by one rupee to Rs4.70. Wyeth Pakistan recovered Rs8 on stray support.

Losers were led by Grays of Cambridge, off Rs14 for no apparent bearish reason, followed by Lever Brothers, Clariant Pakistan, National Refinery, Siemens Pakistan and Pakistan Oilfields, off one rupee to Rs3.

Hub-Power was traded unchanged at the last level of Rs23.05 on 5m shares followed by PTCL, firm by five paisa at Rs17.50 on 4m shares, National Bank, up 20 paisa at Rs20.35 on 3m shares, Chakwal Cement, lower 10 paisa at Rs2.70 also on 3m shares and PSO, unchanged at Rs140.15 on 3m shares.

Fauji Fertilizer, followed them, up 35 paisa on 1.857m shares, FFC-Jordan Fertilizer, easy five paisa on 1.707m shares and MCB, up 20 paisa on 1.001m shares.

FUTURE CONTRACTS: Traded volume further shrank on this counter to 3.830m shares from the previous 5.323m shares a day earlier owing to slack speculative activity.