Losses on the 100 index continue unabated as the benchmark index dipped approximately 160 points in the first trading session of the month, to close at about 41,582 points, down by 0.38% during the day.
This marks the fifth consecutive session of losses on the Pakistan Stock Exchange since Tuesday when the index had opened at 42,730 points, thereby loosing about 1,148 points in five sessions alone.
KSE 100 was seen to be under immense pressure during the earlier part of the day on investor concerns over the standstill between Pak-US relations after the suspension of $300 million in Coalition Support Fund to Pakistan.
In addition, investors had been expecting the government to take some tough decisions on the fertilizer sector and the circular debt issue during the meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee held today.
As a result, the 100 index had dropped close to 550 points during early hours of the trading session today, but losses were partially offset during the latter part of the day as no negative news came out of the ECC meeting.
The 100 – index saw an intraday high of 41,742 points, close to its opening value, and sank to an intraday low of 41,192 points, thus travelling within a range of 550 points today.
Within KSE – 100, 88 companies’ shares were traded today. The volume traded during the day is recorded at 80.8 million shares, at PKR 3.8 billion. Of these 88 companies, only 15 companies closed the day in the green zone, with respect to change in their stock prices. Meanwhile, 69 companies closed the day in red and 4 companies’ stock prices remained unchanged from their previous closings.
The worst performing sectors of the day for the index were Automobile Assemblers, Commercial Banks and Fertilizer, as they collectively took away about 80 points from the 100 – index.
While the general outlook remained bearish, some firms came out as outperformers during the day. KEL (+4.52%) emerged as the volume leader on the 100 index following news reports that suggested its sale was on the agenda of the ECC meeting today. Similarly, AGL (+9.47%) also emerged as one of the volume leaders today on reports that the ECC has decided to open up fertilizer plants that were shut down earlier, in order to deal with the urea shortage situation on hand.
KSE All Share Index, on the other hand, similarly lost 120 points at the session end, to settle at 30,533 points, down by 0.39%. The index peaked to an intraday high of 30,656 points and dropped to an intraday low of 30,341 points, witnessing a trading activity of 159.2 million shares at a value worth PKR 5.2 billion.
In total, 285 scrips were traded within Karachi Stock Exchange today. Of these, 70 scrips advanced to the positive, 222 scrips declined to the negative while 19 scrips remained as they were, in terms of change in their stock prices.
Within the broader KSE, Chemical sector led the volumes for yet another session, as the companies within the sector saw trading activity of a total of 35.2 million shares.
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