Market to keep declining trend intact in near future

LAHORE - The stock market, in continuation of the last week's bearish trend, kept on its sluggish view, remaining in strong grip of the bears on Monday and shedding another 83.28 points to settle at the low of the day at 11,878 level mainly due to worse political crisis and poor law and order, dealers said.

According to stock market experts, lack of confidence of the stakeholders and further depreciation of rupee to a record low of Rs70.6/USD has become a major cause of concern. They were of the view that support from institutions could only be triggered if any form of confidence building measure is taken.

Market turnover improved but activity remained restricted to selected scrips. Market remained in the strong grip of bears. Even technical correction could not take place.

Tariq Khurshid, Executive Director, First Pakistan Securities said that only better financial results can lift the market, which are two to three weeks away. There is little hope of any improvement on political front hence market in all probability will keep the declining trend intact in near future.

Earlier, market keeping intact bearish move, opened with downward gap 61.97 points at 11,899.69 points and remained there for some time, then took two/three small dips to reach at its day low of 11,878.38 points.

Free float index followed suit and after opening with down wards gap it slowly advanced to its day low of 13728.14 points which it touched just before closing. It closed fractionally up from its low at 13728.54 points and suffered loss of 123.98 points. All shares index lost 54.19 points and closed at 8564.91 points. Trading activity shrank further and remained restricted to 166 scrips today. Out of these traded scrips only 19 were gainers against 142 losers while 5 scrips kept last closings.

BAFL topped in volumes with traded volumes of 4.476m shares and closed limit down after loosing rupees 0.39. From top thirty volumes leaders only two closed with plus signs and tow kept last rates while rest twenty-six closed in minus column.

At Lahore Stock Exchange market opened 13.79 points minus at 3706.85 points but rushed to touch 3696 points low. It remained there for some time and then plunged to 3692 points. Around closing it dipped further and closed 33.41 points minus at its day low at 3687.23 points. From 85 traded scrips just one closed with plus sign and 23 closed with minus while majority 61 scrips kept last closings without any change in price. Volumes saw substantial improvement. They were being doubled from last volumes 0.213 million to 0.431 million shares. Here too BAFL topped in volumes with traded volumes of 0.326 million shares.