Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan equities closed Thursday’s session on a negative note in line with the global equities sell-off sparked by the “Comey Memo” with the benchmark KSE-100 index extending losses by shedding further 554.81 points, or 1.08 per cent settle down at 50,956.60 level.

Market traded with a bearish bias throughout as profit-taking in major sectors notably Financials, Power, Cements and Oils kept Index deep in the red. Seven stocks that contributed 281 points to index decline came from UBL (-3.1%), HUBC (-3.7%), ENGRO (-2.1%), PPL (-2.5%) & MCB (-2.2%), while NESTLE (+3.6%), ICI (+4.7%), PAKT (+2.9%), INDU (+1.1%) & PICT (+3.4%) added 67 points to the index.

Banks shed 185 points, E&P’s 86 points, Cement 77 points , while Food gained 28 points. Retail favorites led volumes while penny stocks WTL (+5.6%) & SILK (6.9%) churned out combined turnover of 47.6 million shares .

Mainboards witnessed a significant drop in volumes as evident by only 69mn shares exchanging hands on KSE100 Index however third tier names continued to lead day’s volumes on retail churning, analysts at Elixir Securities commented.

Activity thinned as volumes declined 19% d/d to 302 million shares while traded value crashed 33% to Rs 12.1bn/$115 million shares.

Volumes were led by technology and communication, banking and chemical stocks.

Shares of 410 companies were traded, of which 182 closed in green, 210 in red and 18 remained unchanged.

Analysts say that despite continued profit-taking in the recent three sessions, measure downside is not expected ahead and market is likely to consolidate around current levels for time being before it resumes its advance to previous record high.