Stocks falter as investors go for profits
The trading floor of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a wave of profit-taking on Tuesday following a sustained rally that took the benchmark to a multi-year high. Topline Securities Ltd said investors chose to book profits as soon as trading began. There was an extended rally in energy sector stocks in anticipation of a hike in gas tariffs for the last few days. The expected hike was announced a day ago and investors decided to offload their positions in the energy sector stocks on Tuesday as per the “buy on rumour, sell on news” axiom. Exploration and production, fertiliser and cement sectors contributed most negatively to the index. Arif Habib Ltd also attributed the profit-taking to the much-awaited gas tariff hike following a “very strong run” in the stock market. “Ideally, the market needs to cool off here and find an equilibrium before taking out the 2017 highs at 53,000 points,” it added. As a result, the KSE-100 index closed at 51,027.94 points after losing 42.89 points or 0.08 per cent from the preceding session. The overall trading volume decreased 11.7pc to 321.4 million shares. The traded value decreased 30.3pc to Rs11bn on a day-on-day basis. Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Pakistan Refinery Ltd (33.5m shares), Fauji Foods Ltd (29.1m shares), BankIslami Pakistan Ltd (15.5m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (13.8m shares) and K-Electric Ltd (13.6m shares).