Stocks continued their downward movement for the second consecutive day yesterday as the KSE-100 index shed 137.41 points to settle at 34,432.89.
The market experienced high degree of volatility as it began on a positive note with intra-day gain of 162 points at 34,731.94.
Yet, the index was unable to sustain that level and went into a free fall, breaching the 34,500-level. Only after intra-day fall of 389 points did the index claw back to recover half the day’s maximum fall.
The redeeming feature of the day was the return of the foreign investors, who made gross purchases of stocks valued at $9.01 million and gross sales at $8.70m on Tuesday to show net buying of $0.31m. It dispelled some of the investors concerns that emanated from the net portfolio outflow of $14m in the previous two days.
Falling banking sector spreads and volatile global commodities impacted the sentiments despite late session support in blue-chip oil, fertilisers and textile scrips on speculations ahead of major earnings announcements this week.
Cement sector was in the spotlight yesterday with trading in 40m shares followed by household goods sector 31.9m shares and banking sector 31m shares.
Cherat Cement was down 1.86pc on depressed earnings while DGKC and FCCL also closed down by 0.07pc and 0.78pc.
