Trading at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Monday experienced an extraordinarily dull session, with the benchmark KSE-100 index losing 195.81 points to close at 41239.89 with very thin volumes, not seen since 2.25 years.
The stock market edged lower in a dull trade in the beginning of the week from Friday’s bearish closing as investors lacked interest in the market because of the political uncertainty.
Justice Asif Saeed Khosa on Monday recused himself from a Supreme Court (SC) bench constituted to deliberate a reference pertaining to the Sharif family’s Hudaibiya Paper Mills and asked Chief Justice of Pakistan to set up a new bench to hear the case.
The market touched an intraday low of 294 points. The market opened with the high of 41435 points.
In the absence of any major triggers, Pakistan equities may remain range-bound as political uncertainty and worsening macroeconomics take their toll. The market witnessed a historic two year low in trading volumes today.
The market also awaits MSCI’s semi-annual rebalancing, to be announced later today. Pakistan’s weight in the emerging markets index is expected to drop from 0.14% to 0.09% as the market has underperformed lately.
All shares index had a traded volume 87.44 million shares today. Overall, stocks of 347 companies were traded on the exchange, of which 115 gained in value, 205 declined and 27 remained unchanged. In KSE 100, just 34.16 million shares were traded with a net worth of just Rs. 2.63 billion reaching a two year low in volume today.
Technology and communication was the volume leader today which was the only sector with some proper good volume today.
Top traded sectors:
TRG Pak Ltd was the volume leader 13.04 million shares, gaining Rs. 1.36 to close at Rs. 34.5. It was followed by Azgard Nine with 7.55 million shares, gaining Rs. 0.12 to close at Rs. 14.36, Dost Steel Ltd with 6.99 million shares, gaining Rs. 0.16 to close at Rs. 13.44 and Dewan Motors with 3.42 million shares gaining Rs. 1.23 to close at Rs. 26.11.
Top Advancers of the market were:
Top Decliners of the market were:
Last week mutual funds became the largest buyers of stocks last week with an investment of over Rs. 1.79b ($17m) and digested selling from foreign and local investors.
