KARACHI, April 29: Stocks took a dip on Monday following substantial gains the previous week.
The KSE-100 index started out in the red, with investors concerned over the political developments over the week-end.
The benchmark pulled back by 94.85 points to close at 18,822.85 points.
The deteriorating law and order situation, many market participants said, had left a big question mark on the elections. The active list was dominated by the third-tier stocks, where punters and day traders generally entered in the hope of making big gains.
Despite substantial volatility with the benchmark touching high and low at 18,925.42 and 18,791.05 points, respectively, the volume was greatly depressed to 157 million shares, compared with the turnover of 206 million shares the previous Friday.
The figures released by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan showed that the mutual funds, which have been the major buyers in the last couple of weeks, remained on the ‘buy’ side on Monday, picking up selective scrips valued at $1.1m.
Among other local participants, banks also purchased equity in the sum of $0.29 million and individuals were net buyers of $0.06 million worth stock.
Foreign investors trimmed the portfolio by sale of $0.19 million worth shares.
Although result season is in full bloom and some big ticket companies came up with quarterly figures on Monday, it failed to trigger any excitement, represented by tiny volume. Engro started the negative momentum as the stock opened 2.9pc down on the rumours of gas supply being cut to its fertiliser plant, however, with better 1Q2013 result announced later during the day, the stock recovered and closed at Rs134.71.
Amongst other major announcements, NBP, MCB and Lucky Cement reported earnings per share at Rs1.42, Rs5.70 and Rs8.32 respectively.
Samar Iqbal, Senior Manager Equity Sales at Topline Securities, stated that due to deteriorating law and order situation in Karachi, local bourse dropped by 0.5pc. Unconfirmed news of gas discontinuation of Engro Fertiliser plant also dampened the sentiments.
Result announcement from leading companies, like NBP, MCB, Lucky, Engro and FFC, failed to boost sentiments.
Profit-taking was seen across the board in low volumes. TRG, Lotte Chemical and Wateen Telecom remained in limelight.
Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corporation stated that stocks closed lower amid political uncertainty.
Institutional profit-taking was witnessed in stocks across the board amid concerns for security unrest in the city. Consolidation in blue chip stocks post major quarter end earning announcements, economic uncertainty on falling foreign exchange reserves after IMF repayments and circular debt issues in the energy sector played a catalyst role in bearish sentiments at KSE.
Trading value of stocks declined to Rs3.84 billion on Monday, from Rs5.47 billion in the previous session.
Market capitalisation saw erosion by Rs21bn to Rs14.629tr from Rs4.650tr the previous Friday.
In all, 381 stocks came up for trading on Monday with 231 losers; 128 gainers while22 remained unchanged.
Among the 10-top traded scrips, TRG Pakistan saw turnover of 28m shares, up by 52 paisa to Rs11.82. It was followed by Lotte Chemical up by 5 paisa to Rs7.59 on 11m shares; Wateen Telecom with 10m shares, gained 35 paisa to Rs5.16; Bank of Punjab was higher by 42 paisa to Rs9.27 on 9m shares; Maple Leaf Cement lost 61 paisa to Rs18.34 on 6m shares; Pak Elektron lost 88 paisa to Rs12.22 on 5m shares; Pervez Ahmed Securities hit the ‘lower lock’ of Re1 to close at Rs2.92 on 4m shares.