Foreign investors continued increasing selling pressure on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Wednesday. The benchmark index lost 293 points or 0.7% compared to a day prior and closed at 44,373 points.
Arif Habib Ltd. said that rising coal prices along with other commodity prices have impacted cement and steel stocks. The impact has been rolled over to oil and gas marketing companies as well as the energy exploration and production sector.
It added, “A key conditionality from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the resumption of the loan programme has been the upward revision in the electricity tariff besides an end to subsidies and increase in tax revenues. These measures in part or whole are expected to dent earnings’ growth of the corporate sector in coming quarters, which is reflecting on stock prices as well.”
Sector-wise, the ones that negatively impacted the trading are cement (-91 points), textile (-36 points), banks (-35 points), technology (-30 points), fertilizer (-24 points) and exploration and production (36 points).
Domino effects of selling in cyclical combined with the oil and gas chain were seen in the overall market with substantial selling pressure in TRG Pakistan. The total traded volume saw Unity Foods leading with 25.7 million shares, followed by 20.1m and 16.8m shares of TeleCard and WorldCall Telecom respectively.
In total, the traded volume went down by 25% day-on-day to 252.8m shares. The average traded value also fell by 26pc to reach $59m.
Apart from Unity Foods, TeleCard and WorldCall Telecom, Treet Corporation and Byco Petroleum also contributed to the total traded volume by 35pc.
Positive contributions to the index were seen from stocks of Mari Petroleum (43 points), United Bank Ltd (22 points), Millat Tractors Ltd (8 points), Colgate-Palmolive (5 points) and National Foods (4 points).
Habib Bank Ltd (28 points), Cherat Cement Company (24 points), Kohinoor Textile Mills (20 points), Lucky Cement (19 points) and Engro Corp (16 points) are stocks that contributed to the index negatively.
