KARACHI – The local bourse witnessed yet another lackluster day as negative sentiment prevailed. As a result, the benchmark KSE-100 index slides by nine points down at 11,675. The KSE- 100 index closed at 11,674.83 with the loss of 9.40 points and total volume stood at 36,325,284 along with the total value of 2,039,775,733. The KSE-30 index gained 1.22 points to close at 11,397.22 and All Share index closed at 8,181.57 after losing 3.6 points. A total of 148 scrips advanced, 120 declined and 83 remain unchanged out of a total of 351 scrips traded. Volumes too remained dull as investors chose to stay sidelined, reflective from 47 million shares traded today.
JSCL and ANL led the volumes, closing 4.9 percent and 3.8 percent up, respectively. But, Lucky Cement’s better than expected result failed to have any lasting impact on the sector. The week began with dismal performance despite better results announcement by HBL and Lucky cement. Active investors shy away from the local stock market despite favorable news flow from the economic front. Most probably, budget rumors kept the stock market in a sluggish mode. The benchmark index moved in a positive territory but could not maintain it in the later half of the trading day.
The market registered volume of merely 47 million shares depicting a lack of confidence while valuable stock is offered at a discount. The government is looking forward to improve the tax net by additional tax measures such as capital value tax and wealth tax, which can be considered a threat to investors, hence cautious behavior before the budget seems justified. It is believed that the market may sustain its lackluster performance, said Bilal Asif at HMFS.
Top gainers in today’s session included Gharibwal Cement, Siemens Pakistan Engineering, Colgate Palmolive (Pakistan), Jahangir Siddiqui, Packages Limited, Pak Reinsurance and Azgard Nine. While top losers were Kohinoor Energy Limited, Pace (Pak), Habib Metropolitan Bank Limited, Agritech Limited, Standard Chartered Bank, Security Paper and Pakistan National Shipping Corporation.
