KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a low-volume and bearish session on Friday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 148.52 points (-0.34 percent) to close at 44,118.39 points.
The market opened on a positive note and remained almost positive during the first half of the session; however, the profit-taking activity gripped the market in the second session and the market failed to turn to the green territory in the entire second half.
The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 426.33 points, showing an intraday high of 44,467.85 points and a low of 44,041.52 points.
A total of 363 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of them shares of 143 closed up, shares of 196 closed down while shares of 24 companies remained unchanged. Out of 96 traded companies in the KSE-100 Index, 38 closed up, 57 closed down and one remained unchanged.
The overall market volumes decreased by 17.05 million to 223.38 million shares. Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 14.09 million to 70.96 million shares. The number of total trades decreased by 696 to 99,122, while the value traded decreased by Rs0.68 billion to Rs7.34.
Among scrips, UNITYR3 topped the volumes with 33.5 million shares, followed by HUMNL (24.16 million) and TRG (20.58 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes included UNITYR3, HUMNL, TRG, TPLP, and UNITY, which formed around 46 percent of total volumes.
The major sectors taking the index toward south were technology and communication (-60 points), chemical (-36 points), cement (-25 points) oil and gas exploration companies (-17 points) and textile (-9 points).
The major sectors taking the index toward north were food & personal care products, pharmaceuticals, power generation & distribution, engineering, fertilizer.
