KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a bearish trend on its first trading session as KSE-100 Index is down by 64.60 points (-0.16%) closing at 40,504.75 here on Monday.
Stocks remained under pressure throughout the session and the market fell as low as 40,470.12. The index touched the day’s high at 40,790.12 points.
Trading volume declined to 181.4 million shares today as compared to 243.08 million traded in the previous session, according to PSX website data. The daily traded value for the KSE-100 Index decreased to Rs 6.177 billion from Rs 7.895 billion in the previous session, the data said.
A senior financial analyst at AKD Securities Ali Asghar Poonawala said continuous pressure of the opposition leaders on the federal government regarding protest and rising cases of coronavirus cases in Pakistan are the main reasons of today’s declining trend. However, there is some positive news for the federal government regarding Gilgit Baltistan’s elections which supports the market.
The investors’ cloud led to significant profit-taking, but few stocks were on selling today, the analysts claimed.
Additional negativity emerged in the form of declining local oil prices and the oil sector remained in negative zone throughout the day, he added.
Analysts at Next Capital Limited attributed the plunge to increasing cases of the coronavirus and political instability.
E&Ps, oil refineries and independent power producers (IPPs) dragged the index, cumulatively shedding 64.60 points.
After falling from two crucial levels of 42,000 and 41,000, the index will try to manage at above 40,000 points level.
Last week, the market was plagued owing to the hostile news flow for the most part of the week, starting from corporates coming up with weak earnings reports and the rise in new coronavirus cases that frightened the provincial government into imposing micro smart lockdowns in hotspots of Karachi.
