KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a lacklustre and low-volume session on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming mini-budget, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 2.1 points to close at 44,174.97 points.
The market opened on a positive note and remained volatile throughout the session, ending almost flat. The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 201.71 points, showing an intraday high of 44,292.91 points and a low of 44,091.20 points.
A total of 349 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of them shares of 160 closed up, shares of 172 closed down while shares of 17 companies remained unchanged. Out of 95 traded companies in the KSE-100 Index, 42 closed up, 48 closed down and five remained unchanged.
The overall market volumes decreased by 71.29 million to 151.79 million shares. Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 30.44 million to 68.02 million shares. The number of total trades decreased by 29,578 to 80,298, while the value traded decreased by Rs2.13 billion to Rs6.55 billion. Overall market capitalisation decreased by Rs12.77 billion.
Among scrips, GGL topped the volumes with 14.21 million shares, followed by UNITY (9.1 million) and TRG (8.5 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes included GGL, UNITY, TRG, WTL, and CNERGY, which formed around 30 percent of total volumes.
The major sectors taking the index toward south were cement with 28 points, engineering with 14 points, insurance with 11 points, investment banks/ investment companies/ securities companies with 8 points and chemical with 6 points. The most points taken off the index were by LUCK which stripped the index of 18 points followed by UBL with 11 points, EFUG with 9 points, DAWH with 8 points and MARI with 7 points.
The major sectors taking the index toward north were oil & gas exploration companies with 34 points, food & personal care products with 18 points, automobile assembler with 11 points, paper & board with 5 points and commercial banks with 4 points. The most points added to the index were by OGDC which contributed 33 points followed by TRG with 14 points, NESTLE with 11 points, UNITY with 9 points and HCAR with 7 points.
