KARACHI - Continuous foreigner selling and last day of future roll over dent investor sentiment. Short trading hours also kept market under pressure on Friday and the KSE-100 Index dropped by 192.79 points to close at 33885.13 or 0.57pc.
The market, dominated by future settlements, remained under pressure through the day’s trade to end lower by 193 points. Despite healthy volumes, selling was witnessed across the bourse. Sideboard scripts remained in the limelight. DCL and Power, after its recent rally, ended lower by 6.5pc and 6.3pc. After its recent rally in PAEL and BYCO, profit-taking was witnessed in PAEL whereas a selling spree was seen in BYCO as both the scrips ended at their lower-circuit. Cements posted recoveries as it ended mixed through the day’s trade. LUCK and CHCC ended 1.4pc and 0.9pc higher while DGKC and MLCF ended marginally lower by 1pc and 1.4pc.
Lack of any trigger in the oil sector, as global prices stabilise, translated into stability in the Oil & Gas sector with PSO, OGDC and PPL shedding by 1.5pc, 2.3pc and 2.8pc, observed Ahmed Saeed Khan at JS Global. Samar Iqbal at Topline Securities stated, major negativity was seen in Index heavy weight oil stocks like OGDC, PPL and PSO, OGDC, PPL and PSO declined by 2.15pc, 2.60pc and 1.63pc, respectively. Traded volume decreased by 27pc to 400m shares with traded value down 3pc to Rs12.6b/ $123.5m.
Major trading activity was seen in second-tier stocks like K-Electric (KEL), Dewan Cement (DCL), Pace Pakistan (PACE) and Lafarge Pakistan (LPCL), with traded volumes of 51m, 29m, 27m and 20m shares, respectively.
Ahsan Mehanti said falling global crude prices, CCP initiatives to check practices of auto assemblers, expectations for dismal CPI Inflation data for May’15, rising political noise and higher taxes on corporate sector levied in the federal budget played a catalyst role in the bearish activity at KSE. Investor interest remained in banking stocks on higher spreads amid rising CPI Inflation beyond May’15.