KARACHI, July 9: Stocks suffered fresh pruning on Tuesday as investors were watching the tactical moves of the institutional traders before riding the bandwagon in an oversold market, ensuring a fair amount of capital gains.
Trading volume, therefore, remained sluggish and was confined to some of the volume leaders, the total being an average daily turnover of most active scrips such as Hub-Power and PTCL.
Most of the leading brokerage houses are still to open their new year accounts but to meet the demands of tax people they are making certain adjustments as much has changed from the current fiscal on this count, one broker said.
The KSE 100-share index showed a fresh modest fall of 4.02 points at 1,795.5 as compared with 1,799.52 a day earlier as leading base shares finished fractionally lower.
Reports of Rs10 per bag increase in fertilizer prices did evoke stray buying in the shares of producers but was not a market factor, analysts said. Fauji Fertilizer rose by 20 paisa, while Engro Chemical fell by five paisa after initial sharp rise.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the underlying sentiment as is reflected by minor either-way changes in the index. The important fact which reflects its inherent strength is that bears failed to push it substantially lower despite having made an abortive attempts during the last couple of sessions.
“The either-way movement confining to 10 points reflects that the bulls are inclined to push it to a sustainable level beyond 1,800 point,” one analyst predicts.
All basic indicators point to a sustained bull-run despite heating up of the local political scene as the market is inclined to follow its demand rather than the external factors. Even the border situation seems to have no relevance to the market’s technical factors.
“It is time to inflate portfolios at the current attractively lower levels on most of the blue chip counters ahead of the corporate announcements from some leading MNCs,” one broker says, adding “but it need courage of conviction in the market’s ability to spring surprises.”
Both the leading institutional traders and financial institutions are still busy with portfolio adjustment business and once they are back the market will witness a major change in its current volatile stance, he adds.
Much of the profit-selling was confined to the bank, textile sectors and so did the insurance sector followed by reports of merger of some big ones to meet the paid-up capital demand. The latest report is that New Jubilee Insurance is in talk with the UK-based Commercial Union Life listed on the KSE to acquire its stake here.
Minus signs, therefore, dominated the list, major decline of Rs23 being in Wyeth Pakistan followed by Central Insurance and Ittefaq Insurance, which fell by Rs2.90 to Rs3.
Other prominent losers were led by MCB, Javed Omer, Sahfiq Textiles, Sapphire Fibre, Lever Brothers, Gillette Pakistan and Lever Brothers, falling by Rs1.10 to Rs3.
Most of the gains were fractional barring 2nd ICP Mutual Fund, Network Leasing, Mehmood Textiles, Abbott Lab and Pakistan Oilfields, which posted gains ranging from one rupee to Rs5.
Trading volume fell to 54m shares from the previous 67m shares as losers forced a strong lead over the gainers at 164 to 86, with 59 holding on to the last levels.
Hub-Power led the list of actives, easy by five paisa at Rs24.05 on 12m shares, PTCL, up 10 paisa at Rs17.65 on 8m shares, Sui Northern Gas, higher 10 paisa at Rs14.05 on 8m shares, Chakwal Cement, up 25 paisa at Rs2.80 on 5m shares, MCB, off 90 paisa at Rs24.75 on 4m shares and National Bank, down 85 paisa at Rs20.15 on 3m shares.
Other actives were led by Fauji Fertilizer, up 20 paisa on 1.847m shares, PSO, off 80 paisa on 1.776m shares, Engro Chemical, easy five paisa on 1.648m shares and KESC, up five paisa on 1.528m shares.
FUTURE CONTRACTS: Trading activity on this counter was also relatively slow as the turnover figure fell to 5m shares from the previous 8m shares.
Hub-Power was traded lower by five paisa at Rs24.15 on 2.258m shares followed by PTCL, easy 10 paisa at Rs17.50 on 0.694m shares, and PSO, off 90 paisa at Rs140.80 on 0.601m shares.
DEFAULTER COMPANIES: Crescent Board came in for stray support on this counter and accounted for 8,000 shares at the overnight level of Rs3.50. Shahpur Textiles, Al-Asif Sugar and Burma Oil followed it, easy by 10 paisa, unchanged and off 80 paisa in that order at Rs1.50, Re1 and Rs8 on 1,500 shares each.