LAHORE: Hunting for a positive trigger, regions worst performer, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) was at the dearth of volumes again on Tuesday. As a result, the market witnessed its lowest closing of 2017 as investors preferred to sell stocks due to prevailing political uncertainty where political parties appear to be heading for street clashes.
The benchmark KSE 100 index dropped 615.73 points intraday to touch Tuesday’s low of 37,768.25. However, it settled down 464.56 points or 1.2 per cent to close at 37,919.42, making it the lowest close below 38,000 point level for first time since June 2016.
The KMI 30 index was also a loser, it depreciated 2.28 per cent intraday when it dropped 1,463.26 points, its lowest for the day. The index was 1,176.03 points in the red at the time of close. The KSE All Share Index inched lower by 279.23 points. There were only 53 advancers while 263 scripts declined.
Participation improved as volumes were up 117 per cent day on day while traded value rose 78 per cent. A total of 108.56 million shares were traded during the entire session with 55.91 million in the KSE 100 index scripts.
Top index point decliners were DAWH (-3.9 per cent), SNGP (-4.9 per cent), HUBC (-2.1 per cent), KAPCO (-5 per cent) and MARI (-3.6 per cent) that withheld 134 points while stocks including HBL (+1 per cent), UBL (+1.3 per cent), LUCK (+1.2 per cent), COLG (+3.3 per cent) and PGF (+5 per cent) added 74 points.
On the sector front; E&P shed 74 points, OMCs shed 73 points, Power and Fertilizer were down 61 points each, Cement was down 49 points, Engineering 23 points, Tech 21 points, Refinery 19 points, whereas Banks gained 14points.
Amongst the volume leaders was Worldcall Telecom Limited (WTL +0.35 per cent) where 15.79 million shares were exchanged. K-Electric Limited (KEL +0.33 per cent) followed by investors exchanging 11.05 million shares. Next was TRG Pakistan Limited (TRG -4.99 per cent) with a volume of 10.51 million.
The transport sector was top decliner as 4.35 per cent was lost from its market capitalisation. The Refinery sector’s market cap depleted 3.70 per cent and oil and gas marketing sector crumbled 3.37 per cent.
Nishat Mills Limited (NML -1.64 per cent) notified the exchange on offering 18 per cent stake in company’s subsidiary M/s Hyundai Nishat Motor (Pvt) Limited to Millat Tractors Limited (MTL -0.57 per cent).
