Heavy selling pressure continued at Karachi share market
Posted on April 26, 2009
Both the retail investors and local institutions opted to offload their holdings. However, foreign investors once again remained the net buyers of shares worth $867,865 on the second consecutive day. The market opened on a negative note and the index hit 7,313.74 points intra-day low level, down by 260.43 points. Trading activities further shrank as the volumes at the ready counter declined to 181.167 million shares as compared to 226.886 million shares traded a day earlier.
The overall market capitalisation declined by Rs 71 billion to Rs 2.193 trillion. Out of the total 352 active scrips, 282 closed in the negative and only 60 scrips closed in the positive while the value of 10 scrips remained unchanged. Fauji Fertiliser Company (FFC) was the star performer of the day with a volume of 13.453 million shares and gained Rs 1.50 to close at Rs 99.91.
In the cement sector, Lucky Cement and DG Khan Cement declined by Rs 2.99 and Rs 1.40 to close at Rs 57.81 and Rs 26.74 with 12.960 million shares and 8.344 million shares respectively. Selling pressure was witnessed in the E&P sector, as OGDC and POL lost Rs 1.63 and Rs 6.46 to close at Rs 71.13 and Rs 143.23 with 12.198 million shares and 5.708 million shares respectively.
The banking sector also remained under pressure as NIB Bank, Bank Al Falah, NBP and UBL declined by Re. 0.04, Re. 0.54, Rs 3.88 and Rs 2.24 to close at Rs 6.23, Rs 13.34, Rs 73.78 and Rs 48.37 with 11.185 million shares, 7.036 million shares, 5.859 million shares and 4.927 million shares respectively. Jahangir Siddiqui Co lost Rs 1.93 to close at Rs 36.69 with 6.997 million shares.
Service Industries and Exide (Pak) were the highest gainers and gained Rs 7.66 and Rs 6.00 to close at Rs 160.89 and Rs 136.00 respectively while Wyeth Pak and Bata (Pak) were the worst losers and lost Rs 54.25 and Rs 41.25 to close at Rs 1325.75 and Rs 783.75 respectively.
Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein Co said that dusty opening kept the prospective buyers on the back foot, despite a foreign inflow reported on Wednesday. The local participants remained cautious and the benchmark continued to lose value. The corporate participants did come in for accumulation. However, knowing the factual situation that low turnover, mainly due to the absence of leverage product in the ready board may lead to further price erosion.
