KARACHI: Stocks staged mixed performance on Thursday with the KSE-100 index unable to find the direction and finally closing flattish with minor gain of 45 points (0.14 per cent) at 32,446.40.

The salient feature that plagued the market was the same – selling of stocks by mutual funds which were worth $4.71 million on Thursday, possibly to meet redemptions. On the positive side, foreign buying also continued with the overseas investors’ value hunting of equity worth $1.59m.

The market opened positive but soon lost its foothold as the investors’ feel good factor over the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to US was overshadowed by the concerns on economy, the impact of implementation of IMF reforms and a lurking fear of further fall of the Rupee. Threats of revival of street politics by the Opposition also kept investors’ cautious.

The Index slipped to the intra-day low by 251 points and remained in the red for most of the day. Selling pressure was seen since early trade in cement, banks and fertiliser stocks. Bulls entered in the last hour to mop up the liquidity which saw the Index emerge from the red and climb to intra-day high by 101 points, but gave up half the gains before close.

Volumes declined further from 84.4m shares to 63.1m shares (-25pc DoD). Traded value also declined by 31pc to $14.6m as against $21m the previous day. Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes included BOP, MLCF, TRG, UNITY and FFL, which formed 36pc of total volumes.

Widespread selling in cements saw MLCF (-4.8pc), DGKC (-2.2pc), PIOC (-2.7pc), CHCC (-2.8pc) and FCCL (-2.5pc). Among banks, HBL performed well despite dismal financial results announced a day ago with its stock price up 0.90pc. NBP gained 0.30pc while UBL (+0.4pc) and BAFL (+0.2pc) also emerged as the major gainers in the sector.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2019