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Karachi Stock Exchange-100 index lose yet
another 173 points
Pakistan
Times Business & Commerce Desk
KARACHI: The declining
trend at the Karachi Stock Exchange continued to persist in the face of
strike call given by MMA on April 2 driving the KSE-100 index to shed yet
another 173 points to the 7596 points at the close of Friday trading
session.
At one stage the index had plunged by 292 points to the 7478 points level.
Nonetheless, the second session managed to gain some recovery mainly due to
PSO on account of positive expectations in the backdrop of its Expression of
Interests (EoIs) by some international groups especially the Kuwait
Petroleum.
Though some wild swings were seen in PSO during the day when the scrip was
down to Rs 383, it came out of the depression later in the day placing
itself in the upper circuit level.
However, when the trading session arrived at the end of the day, the PSO
scrip closed slightly below its upper lock, posting a net gain of 6.0%.
Trading volumes remained thin at 282 million shares as against 506 million
share trade volume of Thursday.
In OGDCL, the same old story was repeated on Friday as well as the scrip
plunged to its lower circuit level in the first few minutes soon after the
trading started to move ahead.
The trading volume however signalled an improvement in OGDCL which stood at
18.3million shares, signaling that weak holders had some opportunity to exit
from the stalemate.
The PTCL showed a lot of resistance before sinking to its lower limit while
PPL’s entry in the KSE-100 index was inauspicious with the scrip decreasing
by 5.0%.
A number of banking scrips also performed well and MCB, BoP and Bank Alfalah
posted net gains of 4.5%, 6.4% and 6.0% respectively.
However, National Bank remained under pressure and the scrip lost 1.1% to
close at the Rs114.60 level.
Cement sector also showed buoyant performance on higher demand for cement
expected in the months to come.
DG Khan Cement, Lucky Cement and Fauji Cement posted net gains of 4.0%, 5.2%
and 1.0% respectively.●
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