The Pakistan Stock Exchange slumped Friday with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 423.60 points, or 1.09 percent, as the fear of imminent interest Rate Hike by the central bank gripped the market.
After gaining 150 points, the KSE-100 Index started moving south and closed at 38,407.98 during a session where it reached a high of 38,982.16 and low of 38,291.70 against the previous day’s level of 38,791.09.
During the current calendar year, the KSE-100 Index is down 5.90 percent after closing 2022 at 40,420.45 on Dec 30.
Ali Nadeem, who is Head of Sales at the First National Equities Limited (FNEL), says there was no positive trigger when it comes to overall news concerning politics and economy while the State Bank of Pakistan’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to raise the interest rate by at least 1 percent which dampened the sentiments.
Earlier on Thursday, Nadeem, talking about the negative sentiments and volatile nature of the market, had said that investors were opting for profit taking as investors were not interested in long-term investment amid diminishing rate of return.
On Friday, the overall market volume stood at 92.43 million shares as a total of 313 stocks were traded with of 194 these declining, 102 registering an increase while 17 remained unchanged.
Obviously, the negative trend decreased the market capitalisation which dipped to Rs6.13 trillion (Rs6,134,081,999,650) against the previous level of Rs6.18 trillion (Rs6,179,824,608,084).
As far as the KSE-100 Index is concerned, its volume was recorded at 51.40 million shares – a huge drop of around 40 percent against the previous day’s level of 92.58 million.
During the session, 86 stocks were on offer for trading out of which the share prices of were 66 down, 17 made gains and three did not see any change.
Pakistan Petroleum with 8.30 million shares again the topped the list of volume leaders on the KSE-100 Index. It was followed by CNERGY 4.18 million, TRG 3.92 million, Oil and Gas Development Company 3.49 million, and K-Electric 3 million.
But when comes of those witnessing a decline in their share prices, the worst performers included Indus Motor 6.46 percent, Yousaf Weaving Mills 5.60 percent, Kohinoor Textile Mill 5.23 percent, Cherat Cement 4.93 percent, and Mughal Iron & Steel 4.59 percent.
As far as the advancers are concerned, the share price of Standard Chartered Bank was up by 2.99 percent by AGP 2.38 percent, Colgate-Palmolive 1.34 percent, Fauji Cement 1.24 percent, and Fatima Fertilizer 1.08 percent.
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