KARACHI: The stock market saw one of the most spectacular days where trading was brought to a halt for the third day in the week. It opened in deep red and sent both the KSE-100 and KSE-30 indices spiralling downwards with the latter losing 4.56pc of value.

As most scrips across the board stood badly battered, the 30-shares index could not struggle out of the 4pc fall in the next five minutes which triggered the trading halt mechanism.

Following the cooling period of 45 minutes, the index rebounded and continued to recover till the end of the first session. In the second, the market saw massive volatility but investors were relieved to see a positive closing with the KSE-100 index recording gains of 104.19 points (0.29 per cent) and settle at 36,060.88.

The figures released by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan in the evening revealed that spoilers were the foreigners who sold shares worth a huge $12.36m. These were absorbed mainly by insurance which built fresh positions in attractively valued shares in the sum of $6.02m. Banks and mutual funds were other major buyers.

“Market recovery was largely attributable to improving sentiments in regional and global markets; positive opening in European markets while India and South Korea put a ban on short sale. In addition, international crude price also posted an intraday gain of 5pc that provided confidence to investors,” brokerage Arif Habib Ltd said in their report.

Recovery was mainly seen in index heavyweight sectors - oil and gas, banking and cement. In the exploration and production, all three major scrips closed in green with Pakistan Oilfields up by 3.2pc, Oil and Gas Development Company 4pc, Pakistan Petroleum 1.4pc, adding 120 points to the index.

Cement saw price increase in Pioneer by 2.9pc, Kohat 4.3pc, DG Khan 0.9pc and Maple Leaf 0.6pc. Pressure was witnessed in the banking space where major players except Habib lost values.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2020