KARACHI: Stock prices suffered a bearish close on Friday as investors reacted negatively to dismal economic data, including a $3.53 billion trade deficit as well as a multi-decade high inflation reading announced a day earlier.

According to Arif Habib Corporation’s Ahsan Mehanti, investors’ concerns over flood-related losses hitting $10bn, slump in the rupee’s value against the dollar and unfavourable numbers for fertiliser and oil sales in August also dampened stock rates and led to a bearish close.

The national currency depreciated 0.17 per cent against the greenback to close at 218.98.

“Going forward, we recommend investors should remain cautious and avail any downside as a buying opportunity in blue-chip stocks,” said JS Global.

The KSE-100 index settled at 42,309.11 points, down 150.97 points or 0.36pc per cent from a day ago.

The trading volume decr­eased 35.5pc to 160.14 million shares while the traded value went down 42.2pc to Rs4.63bn on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing sign­ificantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Tele­­com Ltd (11.93m shares), Flying Cement Ltd (9.71m shares), Silk Bank Ltd (8.95m shares), Cnerg­yico PK Ltd (8.3m shares) and Pak Elektron Ltd (7.77m shares).

Sectors that contributed negatively to the index performance were oil and gas exploration, commercial banking, automobile parts and accessories, oil and gas marketing and automobile assemblers.

Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were Colgate-Palm­olive Pakistan Ltd (Rs60.56), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs48.50), Sapp­hire Fibres Ltd (Rs36.62), Nestle Pakistan Ltd (Rs35.99) and Gatron Industries Ltd (Rs28.05).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Sapphire Textile Mills Ltd (Rs92.96), Mehmood Textile Mills Ltd (Rs63.28), Shield Corporation Ltd (Rs22.30), Pakistan Tobac­co Company Ltd (Rs21.50) and Thal Ltd (Rs15.02).

Foreign investors remained net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.01m.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2022