KSE-100 starts week with loss of whopping 1,578 points

KARACHI: Stocks suffered another bearish session on Monday when selling pressure brought down the index heavily, keeping the market in the negative zone throughout the day.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark, the KSE-100 index, closed the session at 78,539.18, showing a decrease of 1,578.71 points or 1.97 per cent after recording an intraday high of 80,085.63 (-32.26) and a low of 78,404.76 (-1,713.13) points. The total volume of the KSE-100 index was 201.00 million shares.

The prevailing political uncertainty and growing chaos had an adverse impact on stock trading, despite the hopes of a further cut in the policy rate at the next monetary policy committee meeting.

“Stocks fell record low on political uncertainty after the government’s decision to ban opposition,” said Ahsan Mehanti, analyst at Arif Habib Corp.He noted that panic selling in the earnings season on the prevailing political noise; uncertainty over the settlement of Chinese IPPs dues; and concerns over security unrest in the country played a catalyst role in the bearish close.

Analysts said that the stock market continued last week’s trend when the market ended the week in negative territory. “Continuing last week’s trend, Pakistan equities resumed the week on a negative note,” said Ali Najib at Topline Securities. He said that the KSE-100 index hung around the bearish zone throughout the trading hours and called the day at 78,539 levels, a loss of 1,579 points (down 1.97 per cent).

He pointed out that uncertain vibes from the political landscape, continuous institutional selling, and the first-day selling of roll-over week can be accredited for today’s selling spree.During the day, blue-chip stocks like HUBC, Engro, FFC, OGDC and PPL contributed negatively by losing 495 points, cumulatively. On the flip side, SNGP, HBL and AVN saw some buying interest as they added 44 points. Over 375 million shares were traded today at the bourse, while the total value landed at Rs19.3 billion. KEL led the volume chart with the trading of over 33.4 million shares.

Share prices fell even amid the hopes of a further policy rate cut as the market expects a 100 basis point decrease in the policy rate, which would bring it down to 19.5 per cent, the lowest since March 2023.

According to the market summary, of the 100 indexed companies, 13 closed up, while 87 closed down. Top losers during the day were NCPL (-6.31 per cent), INIL (-5.87 per cent), ABOT (-5.51 per cent), PSEL (-5.43 per cent), and FABL (-5.01 per cent). On the other hand, top gainers were SNGP (+4.07 per cent), POML (+3.62 per cent), GADT (+1.77 per cent), SHFA (+1.30 per cent), and AVN (+1.19 per cent).

In terms of index-point contributions, companies that dragged the index lower were HUBC (-155.81 points), ENGRO (-96.56 points), FFC (-91.91 points), OGDC (-87.19 points), and PPL (-62.17 points).

Meanwhile, companies that added points to the index were SNGP (+26.20 points), HBL (+13.56 points), AVN (+3.07 points), PAEL (+2.84 points), and ILP (+2.40 points).Sector-wise, the KSE-100 Index was let down by commercial banks (-343.59 points), oil & gas exploration companies (-223.55 points), fertiliser (-219.09 points), power generation & distribution (-198.76 points), and cement (-124.62 points). The index was supported by cable & electrical goods (+2.84 points), tobacco (+2.09 points), real-estate investment trust (+1.23 points), textile spinning (+0.78 points), and vanaspati & allied industries (+0.39 points).