KARACHI - The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) benchmark KSE-100 continued to crash hard, clocking in a fresh 2017 intra-day low of 38,375 points before bouncing slightly to close the day at 38,482 points, down by 598 points. This has pushed KSE-100 year to date fall to 20%, while index has crashed 27% from its peak.
Political uncertainty took a toll on PSX, where deadlock in Senate over proposed delimitation bill has raised concerns over timely elections in 2018, stated dealer at Topline Securities. Further, recently volatility in the Pakistani Rupee also raised sector specific confusion where after closing at Rs107 to the dollar on Friday, Pak Rupee slipped again yesterday as per news media.
Top 10 index point decliners were LUCK (down 3.9%), PSO (5%), ENGRO (2.6%), DAWH (3.6%), MCB (7%), SNGP (5%), DGKC (3.6%), SEARL (5%), HBL (0.8%) & ISL (5%); withholding 311 points from the index, while stocks including OGDC (up 3%), PPL (2.2%), POL (0.8%), MARI (2%) & NESTLE (1%) added 130 points to the index.
On the sector front, cement eroded 123 points, fertilizer 118 points, banks 100 points, OMCs 97 points, auto assemblers 53 points, engineering 43 points, power 36 points, pharmaceuticals 34 points, refinery 21points, tech & transport 20 points each, while dollar hedge E&Ps added 124 points.
More than 60 scrips in all sectors closed at their respective lower circuits. Cement sector overall laid out a sharp decline amongst the major laggards of the aforementioned sector. Limited institutional interest was seen in the key sectors such as banks where HBL (down 1.03%), UBL (0.11%) and MCB (1.63%) closed in red. Refinery sector led the declines over news that oil industry has raised red flag over imminent closure of local refineries, said analyst at JS Global.
Traded volumes plummeted by 13% DoD to 129m shares while value traded dropped to $56m.