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KARACHI: The stock market on Thursday extended overnight losses as investor sentiment turned negative ahead of the first review under the IMF’s $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) as concerns grew over declining revenue collection and a disappointing sole bid for the privatisation of the national carrier. This led many investors to take profits, causing the KSE 100 index to fall below 89,000.
After gaining 413.66 points to 90,700.23 in initial trading, the index came under intense selling pressure and settled at 88,966.77, suffering a loss of 1,319.80 points or 1.46 per cent day-on-day.
Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks closed sharply lower near the earning season close on institutional profit-taking.
He added that the rupee instability and uncertainty over the SBP decision on the policy rate ahead of IMF’s first review on EFF fuelled a downturn at the PSX.
Topline Securities Ltd said the recent rally at PSX was due to the expectation of a decline in the SBP’s policy rate. However, investors resorted to profit-taking after the government slashed cut-off yields by up to 140 basis points in the T-bill auction yesterday, which can be attributed to buying on the rumour and selling on news phenomena.
However, the trading volume was down 11.79pc to 546.27m shares while its value fell by 11.79pc to Rs27.34 day-on-day.
Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric (73.61m shares), The Bank of Punjab (42.66m shares), WorldCall Telecom (25.89m shares), Silkbank Limited (25.10m shares) and TRG Pakistan (18.70m shares).
The shares registering the most significant increases in their prices in absolute terms were Hoechst Pakistan (Rs140.46), Unilever Foods (Rs112.49), Philip Morris (Rs48.38), Sazgar Engineering Works Ltd (Rs37.10) and Sapphire Textile (Rs36.72).
The companies that suffered significant losses in their share prices in absolute terms were PIA Holding Company [B] (Rs91.28), Nestle Pakistan (Rs75.73), Rafhan Maize (Rs50.00), Hallmark Company (Rs35.43) and Archroma Pakistan (Rs31.81).
Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2024
