KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) ended the week in negative news, with the benchmark KSE-100 closing lower on the back of political turmoil in the country against the backdrop of a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan.
A recovery in the rupee against the dollar, remittances data and a drop in international oil prices failed to attract market participants, who remained wary of the overall political situation.
At the close, the benchmark KSE-100 index was down 200 points, or 0.46%, at 43,653.33.
In its post-listing comments, Arif Habib Limited noted that the market had opened in the green zone and remained volatile throughout the day. It added that a range-bound session was observed due to “political turmoil and an overheated commodity cycle.”
Contributing sectors included commercial banks (-43.0pts), exploration and production (-42.0pts), cement (-40.1pts), electricity (-30.0pts) and petroleum marketing companies (-19.5pts).
332 companies’ stocks were traded, of which 110 were up, 205 were down, and 17 were unchanged.
Overall trading volume fell to 149.29 million shares, compared with 271.9 million shares on Thursday. Shares were traded at Rs 5.26 crore on the day.
TPL Properties led the way with a loss of Rs 1.26 to close at Rs 22.46 with 12.27 million shares traded. It was followed by Pak Elektron, with 11.9 million shares traded, at a loss of 0.67 rupees to close at 1.82 rupees, and TPL Corporation, with 9.39 million shares traded, up 0.03 rupees to close at 10.06 rupees.
