KARACHI: Stocks staged another roller-coaster session on the last trading day of the week, with the benchmark KSE-100 index taking a deep plunge of 449 points within the first 15 minutes of the opening bell as nervous investors started to jettison shares across the board.

But as sanity returned, individual investors took heart with the institutional buying which, to everyone’s surprise, saw the index bounce amid choppy moves to a plus 74 points and cross the 40,000 mark.

By the close of the session, there was no end to the uncertainty over the political turmoil. The index managed to settle with clipped losses of 114.43 points, or 0.29 per cent, at 39,872.88.

In the six trading sessions since Oct 20, an amount of Rs389 billion has been wiped off the market capitalisation, which at the close on Friday stood at Rs8.085 trillion.

Volumes on Friday declined by 14.5pc to 329mn shares, from 384m shares traded a day earlier while trading value decreased by 13pc to Rs10.8bn, from Rs12.5bn. Major contribution to the downside in today’s session came from Pakistan Pet­roleum (PPL) which fell 1.13pc, Hub Power Company 0.99pc, Dawood Hercules 1.54pc, TRG Pakistan 3.35pc and Fauji Fertiliser 0.75pc, analysts at Intermarket Securities said.

In contrast, Fauji Cement (FCCL) rose 2.89pc, Lucky Cement 0.86pc, whereas both Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd and Sui Southern Gas Company closed at their upper circuits.

Among energy players, Oil and Gas Development Com­pa­ny dropped 0.27pc and managed to eke out marginal gains. PPL and Pakistan Oilfields, which fell 0.87pc, failed to rejuvenate investor interest amid lower crude oil prices.

Autos were worst off with Honda Atlas cars going down 1.23pc, Indus Motors 1.55pc, Pak Suzuki 0.38pc, Ghan­dhara Nissan 2.98pc and Ghandhara Industries 4.38pc.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2016