KARACHI: The Pakistan equity market closed in the red zone on Friday, as investors’ participation remained low before the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announcement.

An analyst at Topline Securities said that investors’ participation in the market was low, as they preferred to remain on the sidelines before the policy announcements scheduled for Monday.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange KSE-100 shares Index shed 0.48 per cent, or 210.85 points, to close at 43,270.65 points. The KSE-30 shares Index shed 0.47 per cent, or 76.97 points, to close at 16,398.66 points.

An analyst at JS Global said that profit taking continued across the board throughout the day as the benchmark KSE-100 Index closed at the 43,271 level losing 211 points.

“The market touched the intraday high of 43,532 points but failed to break the intraday resistance of 43,777 points. Moving forward, the upcoming monetary policy meeting of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement will remain key driving forces for the market,” he added.

“We recommend investors to adopt ‘buy on weakness’ strategy in tech, exploration and production (E&P) and cement sectors,” he said.

As many as 323 scrips were active of which 110 advanced, 185 declined and 28 remained unchanged.
The ready market volumes stood at 306.20 million shares, compared with the turnover of 621.21 million shares in the last trading session.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said that the Stocks closed lower on investors’ fears over the negative outcome of the Rs50 billion fresh revenue measures and new taxes in the IMF led mini budget.
“Falling rupee and uncertainty over the SBP policy announcement on August 22 amid high inflation played a catalyst role in the bearish close,” he added.

The companies which reflected the highest gains included Siemens Pakistan up Rs45 to close at Rs750/share, Shield Corp up Rs21.14 to close at Rs303.13/share.

The companies which reflected the most losses included Sanofi-Aventis down Rs61 to close at Rs1,400/share, and Sapphire Textile down Rs55.50 to close at Rs1,007/share.

The highest volumes were witnessed in Hascol Petrol with a turnover of 71.46 million shares. The scrip gained 55 paisas to close at Rs6.87/share, followed by Pak Refinery with a turnover of 19.45 million shares. It shed 8 paisas to close at Rs19.83/share. Bank of Punjab remained the third with a turnover of 19.14 million shares. It gained 19 paisas to finish at Rs6.03/share.

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