KARACHI - Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained range-bound on Wednesday and the 100-share index, after making an intra-day low of 107 points and high of 183 points, closed at 43,347 points by gaining 94 points.
HBL (down 1.85%) lost to close in the red zone on news that Moody’s has downgraded HBL’s BCA rating to Caa1 from B3, and that SBP has started probing into the issues regarding HBL’s recent penalty, observed analyst at JS Global.
Market is expected to recover in the near term over some clarity on the political front, while relatively softer current account deficit for Aug-2017 also showed signs of improvements in the economic indicators, dealers said.
Top 5 index point contributors were MCB (up 2.1%), UBL (1.5%), PSO (1.5%), NML (3.2%) & NRL (4.3%) adding 107 points, while HBL (down 1.9%), SNGP (2.6%), MEBL (4.5%), OGDC (0.5%) & KEL (2.4%) eroded 120 points.
On the sector front, cements added 24 points, textiles added 21 points as Nishat Mills (NML up 3.2%) & Nishat Chunian (NCL up 5%) gained in hopes of export measures to be announced in upcoming ECC meeting. Fertilizers shed 17 points while banks held back 11 points
Foreigners were net buyers of $1.0m. Buying was concentrated in OMCs ($1.1m), textile ($0.7m) & cement ($0.4m), while E&Ps witnessed outflows of $1.2m, said dealer at Topline Securities. Total volume for the day was 223 million shares as compared to 219m shares in the previous trading session. While traded value stood at Rs12b/$113.6m. WTL (down 10%) and TRG (up 0.52%) from the tech sector led the volume with 26m shares and 24m shares traded respectively. Scrips of total 396 active companies were participated in the session of which 207 closed in advance, 170 in decline while 19 remained unchanged.
