Zubair Yaqoob
Karachi
Market saw a significant drawdown of ~1400pts during the session and closed -1222pts. Over the weekend, worse than anticipated Inflation caused concern amongst investors, which were otherwise anticipating a rate cut just last week, before the announcement of monetary policy. However, the prospects of a rate cut got dampened by the latest release of inflation statistics. Declining international crude prices added to the woes of investors and significant dip in oil stocks was also observed. Banking sector stocks realized trading volumes of 40.7M shares, followed by Cement (27.4M) and Technology (26.4M). Among scrips, BOP led the trading volumes with 23.5M shares followed by HASCOL (12.7M) and MLCF (11.9M). The Index closed at 40,409pts as against 41,631pts showing a decline of 1222pts (-2.9% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-320pts), E&P (-271pts), Fertilizer (-137pts), Cement (-98pts) and O&GMCs (-71pts). Volumes increased from 193.9mn shares to 203.1mn shares (+5% DoD).