KARACHI: Stocks fell for the fourth consecutive day as the KSE-100 index again slipped lightly by 30.48 points to settle at 46,644.29. Trades were choppy and the index witnessed sharp volatility to move between the intraday high by 171 points and low by 333 points.

The significant feature of the day was the giant leap in the traded volume which crossed one billion shares and stood at 1.01bn. The last time volume recorded over a billion turnover was 16 years ago in 2005 at 1.09bn shares.

However, there was little for the market to celebrate, since in 2005, the traded value was a massive Rs106bn while the value traded on Wednesday amounted to just Rs27bn. The reason for the oddity was that the volume leaders then were three blue chips OGDC, PTC and NBP which accounted for 42pc of aggregate volume and 43pc of total value.

By contrast, on top of the volume leaders list this time was WorldCall Telecom with 370m shares, followed by K-Electric 107m shares. WorldCall trades at a paltry Rs1.68 a share and KE closed at an insignificant Rs4.54 apiece. Rest of the volume leaders on Wednesday were also mainly penny stocks which is why there was such a major difference in volumes and value traded. The volume jumped 52pc over the previous day while the value traded fell by 4pc.

Other than that the market opened in the red and continued to slide as shares across the board lost values. E&P sector which had taken off after a long time as international oil prices improved, relapsed into the red with all four major stocks recording declines.

Banks, pharmaceuticals, auto assemblers, and steel scrips were all losers. The significant change on Wednesday was that the long rallying TRG (up 750pc since March 2020), Netsol Tech and Systems Ltd lost values. The only saving grace was the cement sector where out of 19 stocks 17 gained between 2.5 to 7.5pc.

National Refinery was also an exception that rallied mainly in the last hour of trading. Stocks that contributed positively to the index included Lucky Cement, Cherat Cement, Pioneer Cement and Kohat Cement.

Scrips that dragged the index down the most included OGDC, PPL, Systems and Mari Petroleum. Foreign investors sold shares worth $1.85m. Among local participants banks and insurance companies also decided to book profit while companies, individuals and mutual funds mopped up liquidity.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2021