Stocks lose 131 points as foreign sell-off intensifies
KARACHI: Stocks continued their south-bound journey with the KSE-100 index declining by another 131.32 points (0.42 per cent) and closing the session at 31,433.89.
The market displayed lack of investors’ appetite as it tumbled to intra-day low by 293 points.
There was no plug on foreigners’ sell-off as they dumped equity worth $2.76 million. However, companies were the major spoilers of the market sentiment as they went out on all round profit taking through sale of $5.47m shares.
On the local front, government struggle to ease circular debt and the Finance Ministry briefing stipulating various options to ease the debt did not enthuse investors. Sentiments also dampened after the Asian Development Bank revised down growth expectation for FY20 to 2.8pc.
Market watchers said that despite decline in cut-off yields in Wednesday’s T-bill auction, 3M, 6M and 12M T-bills coming down by one basis point, 9bps and 8bps respectively driven lower by a number of possible positive economic data and expectation of slowing inflation number, investors were not attracted to risky equity markets.