After yesterday’s bombastic performance, the benchmark’s movement was fairly restricted and moved within a band of 129 points with 46 million shares traded during the day. Banks were in the limelight on the back of better result expectation and final dividend announcement. NBP, the underdog of CY11, gained some respect from the investors, while MCB ruled the banking stocks with its performance.
Fertiliser sector became the victim of profit booking. The penny bank NIB was unable to post major gains despite acquisition news from China. The political drama is in full swing with major opposition parties foreseeing early elections or campaigning against current regime. Keeping in view political uncertainty and economic challenges, we may foresee market performance to remain depressed, said Bilal Asif at HMFS.
KSE-100 index closed down 40 points with dismal volumes of 46 million shares. PPL and OGDC witnessed activity with 1.1 million and 2.3 million shares respectively. Likely upward revision in wellhead gas prices stirred activity in PPL, while weak numbers from Zin block kept investors interested in index heavy weight OGDC. Amongst banks, NBP and MCB gained 2.8 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively on expectations of a payout with the full year results. Sustainability of high cement prices continued to keep LUCK and DGKC amongst volume leaders. Interestingly, LOTPTA was the volume leader with seven million shares, despite the weak PTA-PX margin outlook.
KSE 30 index closed at 10359.14 levels with the loss of 19.09 points, while ALL Share index lost 26.45 points to close at 786873 levels. Total 107 scrips advanced 104 declined and 110 remain unchanged out of total 321 scrips traded.
