Equity market witnesses mixed trend on profit-taking

KARACHI - The local equity market witnessed mixed activity on Thursday on profit taking by institutions and retail investors as the KSE 100-index shed 4 points to close at 8,315 points on Thursday.
Profit taking in PSO and NBP on account of rising circular debt and expectation of falling financial results led to negative activity at the close. It is important to note that foreign players made a net investment of $ 6.56 million on Thursday.
We hope that investor community will remember the day of August 27, 2008 when index was frozen. The impact of the closure on the investors community cannot be forgotten. We are of the view that the market has the potential and fundamental grounds to maintain its bullish wave, said CEO HMFS Shahid Ali.
Local bourse stayed in a narrow band, declining trend in international oil prices initiated off-loading in expensive oil and gas exploration stocks, while sector stocks trading at comparatively low multiples witnessed accumulation on dips by both corporate and individual participants.
Besides the mentioned sector, group specific stocks invited turnover while overall market mainly high price stocks witnessed off-loading.
The KSE-100 share index opened in green numbers, up by 14.38 points and narrowly missed the opportunity to close the day in green zone and the index closed at 8,315.16 points with a loss of 4.58 points on Thursday.
However, KSE 30 index closed at 8,931.84 points with a gain of 20.85 points.
Squeeze in turnover despite substantial dollar inflow being reported on NCCPL as foreign buying clearly suggests that due to absence of ready board leverage stagnation has yet again surfaced with phasing out of result season.
Although various other triggers are in sight, such as a resolve on circular debt issue, likely decline in next monetary policy announcement, the main trigger that will allow the local equity market to perform at its potential both on turnover and price discovery will be introduction of modified CFS, said Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz FidaHusein.
Trading activity further dropped to 118.974 million shares as compared to last trading sessions ready market volume of 151.197 million shares. Total trading value of the stock exchange remained Rs 8.408b against Rs 8.817b of last session.
Market capitalization squeezed to Rs 2.44tr as compared to Rs 2.441tr of last session. Of 367 active scrips at the KSE, only 144 managed to advance, 199 declined while the value of the shares of 23 cos remained unchanged.
OGDC continued to flourish and hit the 100,000 mark once again but the selling pressure put the stock a little downward with nominal gains of Rs0.85/share. Over the last couple of days MCB become a star performer with its speedy bullish performance. POL once again mileage over other E&P companies and nearly reached the 200,000 level.
After a gap of several sessions, JSCL was crowned as the volume leader of the day with the trading of 11.364 million shares on Thursday, followed by OGDC with 10.126m shares, NBP 8.363 million shares, FFBL 7.760m shares, Pak Oilfields 7.373m shares, PTCL 5.989m shares, MCB Bank 5.676m shares, DGKC 5.554m shares, Pak PTA 4.698m shares, AHSL 4.507m shares namely.
Leading gainers at the market include Unilever Foods, up by Rs53/share to close at 1,403 with the trading of only 1 share, Unilever Pak gained Rs51.05/share, closing at Rs2,275.25, Attock Petroleum added Rs15.28/share and its total value was improved to Rs401.07, Rafhan Maize up by Rs15/share and closed at Rs1,575, Bata Pak gained Rs12/share to close at Rs800.
Conversely, Wyeth Pak lost Rs32.19/share to close at Rs1,147.80, Siemens Pak Engineering down by Rs30/share and its value was decreased to Rs1,080 with a small turnover of only 11 shares, Exide Pak lost Rs5/share, closing at Rs157, Ferozsons Lab down by Rs4.82/share and closed at Rs162.18, PRL lost Rs3.72/share to close at Rs124.35.