Closing Bell: And the battle continues

April 29, 2019 (MLN):  The benchmark index, after seesawing throughout the session, ended the day on a depressing note, as it shed 104 points in today's trading and closed at 37,026 points, marking a negative growth of 0.28% from previous session’s closing.

A quiet battle was observed in the stock market between bulls and bears, as in early trading the market gained 307 points. However, it could not sustain the initial gains and bears took over the equity market on the back of negative sentiments emanating from qualms regarding the government's implementation of the measures proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the possibility of increasing taxes in the upcoming budget.

The index’s depressing performance today was heavily subject to the hefty losses incurred by the Oil & Gas Exploration Companies and Fertilizer sector as they collectively took away 143 points from the index.

Particularly, points lost on the scrips of PPL (-2.23%), OGDC (-1.71%), POL (-1.91%) and ENGRO (-0.94%) led the index in red.

Bounded within a range of 488 points, the index travelled between an intraday high of 37,437 points and an intraday low of 36,949 points. Nearly 132 million shares were traded today for the scrips listed on the benchmark index with their total value recorded at Rs 5.4 billion.

Meanwhile, the broader KSE All Share index lost 21 points in today’s trade and closed the session at 27,076 points. A total of 117 million shares were traded within this index at PKR 6.3 billion.

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