Stocks endured another round of battering today (Monday) as the KSE-100 Index witnessed a 1200+ points drop in intra-day trading.
At the end of day, the benchmark KSE 100-share Index recorded a decrease of 998.36 points, or 2.49%, to settle at 39,072 as the market heads for the lowest close in two months. This was the highest single-day decline after April 21, 2020.
According to Arif Habib Ltd, the market has declined by 8.4% since its recent high of 42,647 in September 2020.
According to the market analysts, higher than expected inflation rate coupled with individuals offloading their leveraged positions due to margin calls were the two main reasons for the aggressive sell-off by the investors today,
In the wake of high inflation numbers and margin calls, the KSE-100 index plunged to a low of 38,865 points because investors offloaded stocks.
Suban Iqbal, a financial analyst told ProPakistani,
Fall in market can be attributed to several reasons, including heated political environment, international local liquidity issues and uptick in local average COVID-19 cases. Our Market was in the bullish phase for the past several months so this correction was expected but the trigger which actually hit was the liquidity crunch from NCCPL.
He further added that NCCPL has deducted Capital Gain Tax for July and August without adjusting the carry forward loss from the past year and the removal of Hascol from eligible securities forced the individuals to sell their holding in order to adjust the margin level. Both of these events disturbed market liquidity.
Foreigners are also on the selling side after parity gains of PKR, said Suban.
Major negative contributors to the index were from the energy sector companies including HUBC, ENGRO, PPL & TRG who cumulatively dented the KSE-100 Index by 218 points.
Shares of 329 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 34 stocks closed higher, 326 declined and 14 remained unchanged. The total volume traded clocked in at 409.86 million shares while the total traded value for the day stood at Rs. 12.6 billion.
HASCOL continued to be the volume leader with 60.42 million shares traded today.
Top Volumes
| SCRIP | PRICE | HIGH | LOW | CHANGE | VOLUME |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HASCOL | 16.07 | 16.85 | 16.07 | -1.3 | 60,427,500 |
| UNITY | 13.98 | 15.2 | 13.95 | -1.1 | 31,983,500 |
| KEL | 3.75 | 4.04 | 3.68 | -.29 | 29,159,500 |
| TRG | 43.17 | 46.31 | 43.16 | -3.48 | 20,318,500 |
| PIBTL | 11.16 | 11.9 | 11.01 | -.76 | 19,406,000 |
| PRL | 15.89 | 17 | 15.89 | -1.28 | 12,880,000 |
| POWER | 8.01 | 8.54 | 7.8 | -.51 | 12,704,000 |
