Judges deadlock invites heavy selling

LAHORE - The equity market on Wednesday, reacting to the deadlock in talks among the coalition partners over the restoration of judges' issue, witnessed a heavy selling pressure with the KSE-100 index losing 393 points to close at 10,525.98 level.

Dealers said that leaders of the coalition govt failed to resolve the differences on restoration of judiciary on Nov 2 position. They said that the market took the news as a threat to the coalition and fearing political uncertainty opted to book the available margins. Selling emanating from all quarters pushed the market down and it closed on a very weak note.

"Leaders of smaller parties of this coalition are trying hard to resolve the issue. If some thing positive emerges in next one or two days market will see reversal of trend otherwise it will go on loosing ground with each passing day of the course, meeting technical corrections here and there," experts added.

The OGDCL declared financial results for the year 2007-8, showing EPS of rupees 11.54 and gave 35% final dividend making total payout for the year rupees 9.5 per shares.

The pay out fell short of market expectations and the scrip with total turnover of 9.125 million shares took top position in volumes but closed limit down. Many dozens scrips closed limit down but even in this bearish market JSCL, EFUL, AICL and PAKRI closed limit up. From top thirty volumes leaders only three scrips closed in plus column and remaining 27 gave minus closings.

Earlier, the market opened 3.62 points minus at 10734.64 points and that proved to be market day high. Through out the day market remained on descending path. It touched 10483.37 points low before closing little improved at 10525.98 points after shedding 393.08 points. Free float index opened in minus column and after hitting 12122.97 points low in intraday trading finally closed with a massive loss of 455.20 points at 12151.36 points.

All shares index also suffered loss of 274.71 points and closed at 7546.46 points.

Traded scrips were 305 and out of those 49 gave plus closing against 247 minus closings while 9 scrips kept last closings. Volumes plunged to 116.579 million shares from last day volumes of 211.244 m shares.

At Lahore Stock Exchange market finally closed at its day low at 3393.71 points after loosing 178.67 points. Trading was reported in 92 scrips and out of those only 4 managed to close plus and 54 closed in minus column while 34 remained pegged to last level.  Volumes were cut short drastically and only 9.302m shares were traded today. Here NIB continues to hold top position in volumes with today turnover of 1.877m shares. From top ten volumes leaders none closed with plus sign.