Stocks fell on Friday as investors either stayed out of or exited the market fearing the country’s politics that has been on a power keg for some time may not catch fire after the arrest of an influential opposition leader, traders said.
KSE-100 Share Index, the main gauge of the country’s capital market, shed 200.29 points or 0.46 percent to settle down at 43,653.33 points, testing a day high 43,966.28 points and a low of 43,596.51 points.
Ahsan Mehanti, an analyst at Arif Habib Corp, said stocks closed lower on political uncertainty, surging government bond yields and weak global equities.
Economic uncertainty, hike in local power tariff, and rupee instability also contributed to the bearish close, Mehanti said.
KSE-30 index also decreased by 100.43 points or 0.59 percent to 16,976.08 points.
Traded shares shrank by 122 million to 149.29 million from 271.90 million shares. Trading value also went down to Rs5.265 billion from Rs7.495 billion. Market capital slid to Rs7.450 trillion from Rs7.486 trillion. Out of 332 companies active in the session, 110 posted gains, 205 losses, while 17 remained unchanged.
Analyst Nabeel Haroon at Topline Securities said it was a rangebound session during the first trading session during which the index seesawed between positive and negative zone.
Investors were seen cutting their exposure in the market before the weekend in the face of ongoing local political uncertainty and volatility in commodity prices owing to Russia-Ukraine war, the Topline analyst said.
A major contribution to the index came from SYS, INDU, MTL, NBP, and UBL, as they cumulatively contributed 106 points, on the flip side LUCK, MEBL, HUBC, TRG, and PPL lost value to weigh down the index by 174 points.
According to State bank, Pakistan’s overseas workers’ remittances stood at $2.19 billion on February 2022. This has increased by 2 percent month-on-month.
However, depreciated by around 3 percent on year-on-year. Pakistan’s overseas workers’ remittances stood at $20.14 billion during July-February 2022.
This posted sizeable growth of 7.65 percent over the same period last year.
According to SBP, "with $2.2 billion of inflows during Feb 2022, workers' remittances continued their strong performance & have remained above $2 billion since June 2020".
Philip Morris Pakistan was the best gainer of the day as it rose by Rs49.90 to Rs724.90 per share, followed by Systems Limited, which climbed up by Rs38.09 to Rs713.03 per share. Being the worst loser of the day, Sapphire Fiber fell by Rs62.99 to Rs777.01 per share, followed by Blessed Textile, which gave up Rs34.99 to end at Rs440.01 per share.
Arif Habib Ltd, a brokerage house, said the market remained dull due to political unrest and overheated commodities cycle.
Stocks opened in the green zone and stayed volatile throughout the day, while mainboard activity was mostly gloomy, the brokerage said.
It said overall activity continued to remain sideways as the market saw hefty volumes in the third tier stocks and across-the-board selling struck the market in the last trading hour.
TPL Properties led volumes with 12.27 million shares, followed by Pak Elektron (R) with 11.90 million shares.
Stocks that recorded significant turnover included TPL Corp Ltd, Unity Foods Ltd, Flying Cement (R), WorldCall Telecom, Maple Leaf, Telecard Limited, Ghani Global Holding, and DGK Cement.
Turnover in the future contracts dropped to 57.28 million shares from 78.66 million on Thursday.
