KARACHI - The bears tightened their grip on the equity market on Thursday and the KSE 100-index failed to sustain the psychological level of 10,000 points due to foreign selling. The Karachi Stock Exchanges (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 0.56 percent, or 56.64 points, to close at 9,993.40 points. Due to less participation of both foreign and local investors, trading volume drastically declined to 66.313m shares. Analysts say that the declining trend in the international markets and reducing oil prices affected investor sentiments. The law and order situation in the city forced the investors to offload their holding at the market. The foreign investors also remained net sellers of shares worth dollar 0.06m. Lotte Pakistan was the volume leader with 11.258 million shares but lost Re0.31 to close at Rs9.65, followed by Arif Habib Securities that declined by Rs1.89 and closed at Rs39 with the total volume of 4.215 million shares. NIB Bank declined by Rs0.08 to close at Rs3.56. Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein said, Besides various uncertainties, latest being the ethnic violence, the market men and the stakeholders stayed concerned about the sinking value of trades and turnover. Although decline was restricted due to low quantum support in index heavy weights, sellers however stayed cued on strength. Thus, disallowing the benchmark to sail smoothly in positive territory. Cautious accumulation was visible in mid-tier and front line stocks by the regular participants for short-term trades besides extending support to the benchmark to sustain 10000, efforts however failed as the day-end sell-off kept the benchmark under tremendous pressure, thus forcing it to close below psychological. Local bourse is likely to stay uncertain, tilted slightly towards negative, thereby offering opportunities of accumulation in dividend yielding stocks, in case of extreme decline, due to price erosion. Since various judicial matters, some directly linked to the local equity market while other impacting indirectly will come under lime light next week, caution stays the call, with recommendation of not to get excited in case of snap rallies, short term bets may however be under taken, with identified stop losses. In case the authorities set to announce the monitory policy next week take into account high government borrowings, high inflationary numbers, released for previous month despite the likely inflationary decision of increasing power tariff kept pending, for upcoming month, along with irking circular debt thus keeping the economic horizon polluted, the decision might not be according to expectations. Ability of the authorities to pass on entire impact of recent bear run in international Oil market may however provide some space to the authorities for lenient view on the monetary stance, for next fiscal, thereby allowing a local bourse mild trigger for post budget consolatory bull-run. With CGT implementation likely to affect further reduction in turnover and value of trades, it is recommended to wait for likely post budget changes in the trading pattern for taking new exposure in the local equities. The regular participants may however react on technical calls; exposure in expensive stocks may be reduced from investment portfolios, while availability of dividend yielding stocks at higher discounts can be capitalized.