KARACHI: Trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchan­­ge remained volatile on Tuesday owing to political unrest and an overheated commodity market, according to Arif Habib Ltd.

The bourse opened in the red zone and stayed under pressure throughout the day as the alliance of opposition parties intensified their efforts to dislodge the PTI from power.

The cement sector suffered losses in particular owing to mounting international coal prices. The banking sector also came under pressure as National Bank of Pakistan posted lower-than-expected quarterly earnings. In the last trading hour, across-the-board selling took place as investors worried about rising political temperatures.

As a result, the KSE-100 index lost 388.62 points or 0.9 per cent on a day-on-day basis to close at 42,878.35 points.

The trading volume decr­e­­ased 4.5pc to 226.1 million shares while the traded val­ue went down 13.3pc to $39.9m on a day-on-day basis.

Sectors that took away the highest number of points from the benchmark index included commercial banking (85.76 points), ce­­m­ent (67.67 points), oil and gas exploration (62.08 points), power generation and distribution (37.34 points) and oil and gas marketing (34 points).

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included TPL Corpo­r­a­­tion Ltd (17.35m shares), Utility Foods Ltd (17.18m sha­­res), Ghani Global Hold­ings Ltd (16.9m shares), TRG Pakistan Ltd (14.12m shares) and TPL Properties Ltd (13.62m shares).

Shares contributing positively to the index included TRG Pakistan Ltd (25.31 points), Bank Alfalah Ltd (14.41 points), Engro Polymer and Chemicals Ltd (12.96 points), Thal Ltd (7.5 points) and Service Industries Ltd (7.45 points).

Stocks that took away the maximum number of points from the index included Lu­­cky Cement Ltd (36.96 poi­n­­ts), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (36.76 points), The Hub Po­­wer Company Ltd (29.66 points), National Bank of Pakistan Ltd (29.04 points) and Oil and Gas Develop­m­ent Company Ltd (24.07 points).

Foreign investors remai­ned net sellers as they off­loaded shares worth $0.4m.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2022