KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) started out with disinterested and cautious investors deciding to take profit and stay away from building fresh positions on Wed­nesday. The KSE-100 index closed down 188.90 points (0.44 per cent) at 42,622.37.

Stocks continued to descend as investors’ were spooked by the uncertainty over two major events: The anticipation of outcome of the Supreme Court hearing on the Panama Papers case and the whether Opec would agree to a cut in production in the Ministers’ meeting at Vienna on Wednesday. Foreign selling which stood at an 8-year high $117m in September also sat heavily on investors’ mind.

Overall, volumes increased by 27pc over the previous session to 585m shares, while traded value increased by 33pc to Rs17.7bn.

Increased activity was seen in Pakistan Oilfields Ltd (POL), which gained 0.87pc after it announced that production from Mardankhel-01 well had started and current production from this well was 3,200 barrels per day of condensate and 40 million cubic feet per day of gas per day.

MARI rose 0.9pc while PPL shed 1.7pc on a mixed note.

Abra Juma on sales desk at Global Securities commented that major profit-taking was witnessed in the banking and cement sector, possibly due to continued foreign selling on the back of further appreciation of dollar against the rupee.

Nabeel Haroon at JS Global observed that the textile sector continued its downward trajectory to close 0.8pc lower from its previous day close on the back of Aptma call to shut down mills by Dec 6. NML down 4.6pc, NCL 3.1pc, GATM 3.3pc, GADT 4.4pc, ANL 1.9pc and KTML 2.5pc.

Among banks, UBL lost 0.8pc, HBL 0.6pc, ABL 0.9pc and NBP 1.9pc.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2016