LAHORE: The bearish note further deepened at the Pakistan Stocks Exchange as the benchmark 100-index dropped 247 points to reach 41189 points level till midday on Monday.
The stocks started new week on bearish note after shedding 99 points to reach 41346 points level in early trading.
Last week the market witnessed some recovery during the outgoing week with KSE-100 index inching up by 0.9 percent WoW to close at 41,436 points.
Mutual Funds during the week bought $17.2 million worth of equities, whereas banks (net selling of $6.6m) and individuals (net selling of $3.2m) continued to offload their positions. Despite bounce back in the market, overall activity remained lackluster with average traded volume and value clocking in at 114 million shares per day (-3 percent WoW) and $60 million per day (-12 percent WoW), respectively.
Cherry-picking in mid-low market cap sectors mostly prevailed with stocks such as SSGC (+7.07 percent WoW), SHFA (+10.65 percent WoW), HCAR (+9.68 percent WoW), DAWH (+9.69 percent WoW) and HASCOL (+5.51 percent WoW) etc garnering investor attention. Heavyweights such as Banks (+0.40 percent WoW), Cements (+0.70 percent WoW), OMCs (+1.77 percent WoW) and Fertilisers (+0.49 percent WoW) gained value.
Stocks including DAWH (10 percent WoW), PPL (2 percent), SEARL (8 percent), MTL (6 percent) and HCAR (10 percent), added 225 points to the index. On the other hand, PAKT (-12 percent), KTML (-10 percent), UBL (-3 percent), MCB (-1 percent) and FATIMA (-3 percent) detracted 115 points from the index. On the sector front; Pharmas and Auto Assemblers gained 3 percent a piece, E&Ps and OMCs gained 2 percent each, Cements gained 1 percent, Banks inched up 0.4 percent, while Textiles shed 1 percent, Insurance was down by 2 percent & Tobacco tanked 10 percent.