Karachi, March 08, 2021: PSX kicked off positive, hitting a high of +595 point on early excitement as the lower house of parliament reaffirmed its confidence in Prime Minister Imran khan by overwhelmingly voting in his favor.
However this positivity couldn’t last as the market came under pressure from likely redemptions in mutual funds, pushing the index down to an intraday low of -988 points and eventually close at the 45,051 level (down 786 points).
Major contribution to the declining index came from LUCK (-3.3 percent), HUBC (-2.5 percent), HBL (-1.9 percent), DGKC (-5.3 percent) and INDU (-6.9 percent). While selling pressure was witnessed across the board, damage was more visible in the cements and banking stocks. PIOC (-6.3 percent), DGKC (-5.3 percent), CHCC (-4.2 percent), LUCK (-3.3 percent), MLCF (-4.2 percent), NBP (2.0 percent), HBL (-1.9 percent) and BAFL (-2.0 percent) were the major laggards of the aforementioned sectors. Volumes improved by 45 percent DoD to 460 million shares as compared to 317 million shares traded in the previous session.
ANL (2.6 percent), UNITY (3.0 percent) and TRG (0 percent) led the volumes with a cumulative ~129 million shares changing hands throughout the day. Moving forward, we expect a similar trend to continue amid political uncertainty. We recommend investors to view any downside as a buying opportunity in the Cement, Steel and Refinery sectors.
