Investors chose to stay on the shore as the fiscal year draws to a close. Participation remained dreary with 53 million shares traded during today’s session compared to average daily volumes of 98 million shares. Weak international markets and political tensions over the weekend also invoked cautious behavior amongst investors.
Fertiliser stocks saw majority of the volumes after ENGRO disclosed over the weekend that it would raise its urea prices in July. As a result, FATIMA closed at its upper limit with volumes of 9.7 million shares. FFC also gained 3.3 per cent during the day. Fertiliser sector performance continued to dominate the local bourse whilst expected COD of FATIMA in early July pushed the scrip on top of the volume leaders board.
Positive news flows in ENGRO failed to appease investor as the scrip continues to take a beating. Gains in oil and gas sector remained constricted as blue chip stocks witnessed slight profit taking. “The current trend is likely to persist over the next few days before the end of the fiscal year”, said Salman Vidhani at HMFS.
The KSE 100 index closed at 12,464.49 levels with the gain of 0.23 points and total volume stood at 43,716,189 along with the total value of 2,288,693,394. “EU’s refusal to extend preferential treatment to Pakistani exports due to resistance by various regional countries certainly made equity participants nervous”, said Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein.
The investors are already cautious due to massive decline in turnover thanks to CGT implementation mode which has restricted the number of participants. Nestle, on the other hand, continued to offer low volume contribution to the index, he added.
