Stocks falter amid unending political strife

The shares market observed another range-bound session on Wednesday owing to a lack of participation from investors. Arif Habib Ltd said the market opened in the green zone but the index soon dipped into the red territory and stayed there for most of the trading session. Market participation was lower than the previous session as the trading volume remained dry in mainboard stocks. However, decent volumes were recorded in third-tier stocks. Sentiments were down also because of the unending political strife that have been going on for months. In addition, stretched-out talks between the government and the International Monetary Fund over the release of the next tranche of the loan necessary for the country’s balance of payments also led to the poor performance of stocks. As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 42,348.63 points, down 24.96 points or 0.06 per cent from the preceding session. The trading volume decreased 13.7pc to 120.2m shares while the traded value went down 7.9pc to $20.8m on a day-on-day basis. Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom Ltd (8.4m shares), Nishat Chunian Power Ltd (6.6m shares), Dewan Motors Ltd (5.8m shares), K-Electric Ltd (5.6m shares) and TRG Pakistan Ltd (4.7m shares).