Market briefly breaches 50K points mark after 81 months

KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) snapped its 11-session winning row on Tuesday and turned towards correction, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index losing 200.34 points (-0.40 percent) to close at 49,531.01 points.
The market opened on a positive note but switched between the red and green territories for the first two hours’ trading. The benchmark index briefly crossed the 50,000 points level for the first time since January 2017 and it caused profit-taking. Overall, the benchmark index gained 3,558.56 points in the last 11 sessions and a correction was already expected, which continued till the end of the session.
The market has been showing strength since the signing of the loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on June 30 last. Moreover, attractive valuations of stocks in terms of price-to-earning-ratio (PE) and buyback of their own companies’ shares by the companies’ owners these days have made the market attractive for investors.
The benchmark index traded in a range of 509.04 points, showing an intraday high of 50,017.45 points and an intraday low of 49,508.41 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 110.60 points (-0.33 percent) to close at 33,108.42 points, while KMI All Share Islamic Index shed 70.02 points (-0.29 percent) to close at 24,170.71 points.
Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 75.05 million to 221.29 million shares against 296.34 million shares traded a session earlier. The overall market volumes decreased by 99.04mn shares to 368.34mn against 467.38mn shares traded a session earlier.
Among scrips, KEL topped the volumes with 65.96 million shares, followed by PIBTL (21.50 million) and MLCF (20.67 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes included KEL, PIBTL, MLCF, GGL, and AIRLINK, which formed over 35 percent of total volumes.
A total of 342 companies traded shares in the stock exchange against 359 a session earlier, out of which shares of 148 closed up, shares of 182 closed down while shares of 12 companies remained unchanged. A total of 95 companies traded shares in the KSE-100 Index against the same number of companies in the previous session, out of which share price of 40 companies closed up and 55 closed down.
The number of total trades decreased by 32,815 to 157,140 from 189,955 a session earlier, while the value traded decreased by Rs3.72 billion to Rs10.40 billion against Rs14.12 billion in the previous session.- TLTP