KARACHI: Stock rates moved within a short range on Wednesday as investors’ participation stayed sluggish.

Arif Habib Ltd said the limited interest from investors was because of the continuous depreciation of the rupee against the dollar, which caused the benchmark of representative shares to close the trading day in the red zone.

According to Topline Securities, investors remained cautious over a high reading of monthly inflation, which clocked in at 27.6 per cent for January versus 24.5pc for December 2022. Other key reasons for the cautious behaviour by investors were further expectations of an increase in oil prices as well as rising electricity and gas tariffs.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 40,619.95 points, down 53.11 points or 0.13pc from the preceding session.

The overall trading volume decreased 14.6pc to 131 million shares. The traded value went down 21.3pc to $21.9m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (9.4m shares), Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Ltd (8.3m shares), Gul Ahmed Textile Mills Ltd (8.3m shares), Habib Bank Ltd (6.1m shares) and Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (5.2m shares).

Sectors contributing the most to the index performance were miscellaneous (-82.8 points), exploration and production (-35.4 points), technology and communication (-22.1 points), fertiliser (-11.2 points) and oil marketing (-6.1 points).

Companies registering the biggest increases in their share prices in absolute terms were Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan Ltd (Rs24.50), Pakistan Engineering Company Ltd (Rs21.11), Abbott Laboratories Pakistan Ltd (Rs21.03), JS Global Capital Ltd (Rs19.33) and Colgate-Palmolive Pakistan Ltd (Rs19.26).

Companies that recor­ded the biggest declines in their share prices in absolute terms were Rafhan Maize Products Company Ltd (Rs325), Pakistan Services Ltd (Rs169.87), Nestle Pakistan Ltd (Rs69.99), JDW Sugar Mills Ltd (Rs28.41) and Dawood Lawrencepur Ltd (Rs16.84).

Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.29m.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2023