Market bleeds 956 points on political uncertainty

KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) turned bearish on Tuesday amid political uncertainty in the country, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 956.43 points (-1.98 percent) to close at 47,429.82 points.
The market opened on a negative note and the indices after tossing between the green and red territories during the first half an hour trading surrendered to selling pressure. Major index sectors like automobile assemblers, cement, chemicals, commercial banks, oil and gas manufacturing companies, and oil and gas marketing companies traded in the negative. Political uncertainty remained the root cause of this bearish trend, with traders speculating delay in holding of the general election that may result in uncertainty surrounding economic policies.
The trend can also be traced to former prime minister Imran Khan’s arrest last week. Moreover, the interim government will also be announced this week and it is yet to see how the stock market welcomes the caretaker set-up, which is expected to be installed within days.
The benchmark index traded in a range of 1,080.14 points showing an intraday high of 48,415.46 points and an intraday low of 47,335.32 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 664.21 points (-2.11 percent) to close at 31,552.71 points, while KMI All Share Islamic Index shed 602.19 points (-2.62 percent) to close at 23,023.24 points.
Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 34.52 million shares to 197.51 million shares against 232.03 million shares traded a session earlier. The overall market volumes decreased by 45.78 million shares to 336.08 million shares against 381.86 million shares traded a session earlier.
Among scrips, CNERGY topped the volumes with 28.32 million shares, followed by OGDC (27.79 million) and KEL (24.63 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes included CNERGY, OGDC, KEL, TPLP and WTL, which formed over 37 percent of total volumes.
A total of 338 companies traded shares in the stock exchange against 351 a session earlier, out of which shares of 46 closed up, shares of 275 closed down while shares of 17 companies remained unchanged. A total of 96 companies traded shares in the KSE-100 Index against the same number of companies a session earlier, out of which share price of 7 companies closed up, 86 closed down and three remained unchanged.- TLTP