KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) plunged for the fourth day in a row on Thursday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding another 427.95 points (-0.96 percent) to close at 43,935.75 points.
Overall, the market shed 2,553.66 points during the last four sessions, mainly due to lack of triggers, rollover week, concerns over continuous foreign selling amid Pakistan’s reclassification from MSCI emerging markets to frontier markets index due next week, and the upcoming mini-budget.
The market opened on a positive note but soon turned towards the south and remained negative for the whole session. The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 781.2 points, showing an intraday high of 44,516.8 points and a low of 43,735.6 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 213.48 points (-0.7 percent) to close at 30,249.34 points, while All Share Islamic Index shed 176.22 points (-0.81 percent) to close at 21,474.05 points.
A total of 341 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of the shares of 129 closed up, shares of 190 closed down while shares of 22 companies remained unchanged. Out of 92 traded companies in the KSE-100 Index, 28 closed up, 62 closed down and two remained unchanged.
The overall market volumes decreased by 115.21 million to 195.17 million shares. Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 42.79 million shares to 97.34 million shares. The number of total trades decreased by 43,991 to 90,253, while the value traded decreased by Rs4.55 billion to Rs8.39 billion. Overall market capitalization decreased by Rs53.45 billion.
Among scrips, TPLP topped the volumes with 16.33 million shares, followed by BYCO (12.23 million) and HUBC (9.5 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include TPLP, BYCO, HUBC, WTL, and TRG, which formed around 28 percent of total volumes.
The sectors taking the index towards the south were commercial banks with 139 points, power generation & distribution with 59 points, fertilizer with 50 points, cement with 48 points, and pharmaceuticals with 43 points. The most points taken off the index were by HUBC which stripped the index of 53 points followed by HBL with 46 points, LUCK with 30 points, UBL with 29 points, and SEARL with 25 points.
The sectors taking the index toward north were refinery with 10 points, glass & ceramics with 7 points, automobile assembler with 6 points, food & personal care products with 3 points, and real estate investment trust with 2 points.
The most points added to the index were by GHGL which contributed 7 points followed by SYS with 5 points, NRL with 5 points, BYCO with 5 points, and MTL with 4 points.
According to experts, the market witnessed a low-volume session, and the last hour trading formed around 30 percent of the volumes. They said that the market is likely to remain under pressure for the rest of the month on account of the ongoing rollover week as well as a rebalancing of the PSX to the status of the frontier market from the emerging market.
However, they were hopeful that the market will bounce back once December starts when MSCI rebalancing will take effect.
