ZUBAIR YAQOOB
KARACHI Overnight pressure on international crude prices bore impact on KSE100 as well. With OPEC+ meeting scheduled for Thursday (PST 7:00 PM), followed by a G20 meeting on Friday, on the same subject, i.e. production cut and management of crude price, local E&P stocks didn’t fell as much as the fall was witnessed in crude prices. Market traded uni-directional (negative) for the most part of the session with Oil & Gas chain trading red. On the other hand, cyclicals, which had positive sentiments yesterday on the back of partial resumption of activities (primarily in Punjab), today saw selling pressure. Cement sector, as have been the case for the past several sessions, again topped the volumes with 42.1M shares, followed by Vanaspati (28.8M) and O&GMCs (28.4M). Among scrips, UNITY (got traction from issuance of SRO on withdrawal of additional custom duty) led the volumes with 28.8M shares, followed by HASCOL (25.8M) and PAEL (14.1M). The Index closed at 30,971pts as against 31,231pts showing a decline of 260pts ((-0.8% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-115pts), E&P (-45pts), Cement (-37pts), Tobacco (-36pts), Fertilizer (-21pts), Insurance (+23pts).
