The arrival of the holy month of Ramadan has further taken the steam out of the local bourse as the KSE100 witnessed dreary volumes of 14.94 million shares. The Market seems to have also discounted the surprise reduction in DR by 50bps, as across the board sell-off continues after yesterday’s slight recovery.
The KSE 100 index closed at 12,226.33 levels with the loss of 27.06 points and total volume stood at 12,408,140 along with the total value of 910,530,934. KSE 30 index lost 21.44 points to close at 11,589.64 levels and All Share index closed at 8,472.09 levels after losing 18.29 points. Total 70 scrips advanced 116 declined and 104 remained unchanged out of total 290 scrips traded.
Major oil stocks remained in the ‘red’ only with the exception of PPL over rumors of foreign funds interest. PSO was the worst hit, down 1.8 per cent despite news that country’s largest OMC increased FO prices by Rs3,000/ton, which is expected to have an annualized positive impact of Rs.2.9/share for FY12. Among fertilizer stocks, Engro remained the volume leader with 1.3 million shares over news that the government is planning to end additional gas outages. Among banks MCB inched up 1.3 per cent, while other major banks closed flattish.
Most of the bellwether stocks including Oil and Gas Development Company, Pakistan Oilfields Limited, Pakistan State Oil, LUCK, HUBC, National Bank and Habib Bank Limited closed in the red zone. There was favorable news for fertilizer manufacturers with government mulling to restore gas supply bode well with investors as leading sector stocks closed in the green zone. Although earnings season surprises have kept the market afloat, lack of triggers subsequently may prolong the bearish spell despite attractive levels, said Salman Vidhani, Senior Investment Analyst at HMFS.
Total Market Capitalization of the market stood at Rs3,227.60bn against the previous of Rs3,236.35bn. Major gainers of today’s session were GHGL, PAKT, PICT, AGL, and PACE. While, major losers included DAWH, PMPK, UBL, TRG, and ACPL.
