KARACHI: The stock market witnessed another range-bound session on Thursday owing to investors’ concerns about rising inflation and political noise, said Arif Habib Ltd.

The benchmark KSE-100 index opened in the positive zone amid dull activity. In the last trading hour, however, investors resorted to profit-taking across the board, dragging the index to the red zone.

Sentiments also took a downturn as the rupee kept losing its value against the dollar amid higher demand for the greenback. The rupee depreciated 0.47 per cent to 219.41 in the interbank market. In addition, the imposition of new tax measures in the wake of the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund put a dampener on share prices.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 43,032.57 points, down 305.4 points or 0.7pc from a day ago.

The trading volume decreased 18.9pc to 208.1 million shares while the traded value went down 11pc to $35.5m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom Ltd (18.59m shares), Hascol Petroleum Ltd (10.5m shares), Pakistan Inter­national Airlines Ltd (9.3m shares), Nishat Chunian Power Ltd (8.7m shares) and Telecard Ltd (7.61m shares).

Sectors contributing negatively to the index performance included power (142.4 points), fertiliser (32 points), exploration and production (28.4 points), banking (27.6 points) and technology (25 points).

Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan Ltd (Rs79.70), Reliance Cotton Spinning Mills Ltd (Rs37.05), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs21.94), Lucky Cement Ltd (Rs11.23) and Hafiz Ltd (Rs7.64).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Sapphire Textile Mills

Ltd (Rs64.33), Colgate-Pal­molive Pakistan Ltd (Rs24.97), Mari Petroleum Company Ltd (Rs19.49), ICI Ltd (Rs17.41) and Siemens Pakistan Engineering Ltd (Rs13.01).

Foreign investors rema­ined net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.5m.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2022