Zubair Yaqoob
Karachi
Market continued trending down even after a break of a week. A host of negative news flow on economic front as well as on the border kept Investors’ nerves jittery.
Mutual Funds have lately been the dominant seller, for reasons of redemption, in E&P, Power and Banking sectors. Other than ISL (financial results due to be announced on Aug 19th) and NCL (news of Buy back), both of which hit upper circuit, majority stocks went down. PPL hit lower circuit in the closing minutes, whereas LUCK also traded at lower circuit. E&P sector led the volumes table with 9.7M shares, followed by Cement (9.1M) and Banks (7.2M). PPL did the most volume with 6.3M shares, followed by MLCF (3.8M) and ISL (3.7M).
The Index closed at 28,765pts as against 29,429pts showing a decline of 664pts (-2.3% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include E&P (-169pts), Fertilizer (-144pts), Banks (-100pts), Cement (-63pts), Power (-54pts). Volumes declined further from 76.4mn shares to 65.1mn shares (-15% DoD). Average traded value on the contrary increased by 11% to reach US$ 21.5mn as against US$ 19.5mn.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include PPL, MLCF, ISL, OGDC and EPCL, which formed 31% of total volumes. Stocks that contributed positively include DAWH (+5pts), ISL (+5pts), MCB (+4pts), BAFL (+4pts) and NCL (+3pts). Stocks that contributed negatively include ENGRO (-70pts), PPL (-62pts), OGDC (-61pts), FFC (-52pts) and LUCK (-48pts).
