World WAR 3: Pakistan-India tension takes toll on stock market

World WAR 3: Pakistan-India tension takes toll on stock market

0

Rising tension between Pakistan and India took its toll on the stock market as the benchmark-100 index dropped 1.41% Wednesday, wiping off most gains made in the preceding few trading sessions.

Matters over domestic politics in addition to uncertainty over the future of Pakistan-India relations were enough to make investors jittery, who took little time to decide on an exit.

Stocks dropped soon after the opening bell and the KSE 100 Index slid below 40,000, bringing an end to gains in speculative plays and penny stocks.

At close, the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s standard KSE 100 index ended 1.41% or 569.04 points lower to end at 39,771.42.

Elixir Securities, in its report, stated concerns over national politics and, more importantly, geopolitics after investors spooked and gave an excellent excuse to equities to correct.

“After the morning bell, market soon slipped lower followed by mid-day recovery, however, reports of foreign selling in index names and retail investors’ struggle to offload small and mid-caps pulled benchmark to close the day with worst losses in last twelve weeks,” said analyst Faisal Bilwani.

“The fertiliser sector continued to remain under pressure as the government failed to announce the subsidy payment scheme on imported DAP,” said Khan.

“Major index movers of the aforementioned sector today were FFC (-1.75%) and ENGRO (-0.96%).

“The oil sector remained under pressure despite global crude oil price rising as concerns grew that OPEC will not clinch a deal to limit oil production in Algiers next week as members stay focused on either boosting output or defending their market share, major losers of the day in the oil sector were OGDC (-0.59%) and PPL (-0.42%),” he added.

“Major index movers of the aforementioned sector today were FFC (-1.75%) and ENGRO (-0.96%).”

“The petroleum sector remained under pressure despite international crude oil price increasing as concerns grew that OPEC is not going to clinch a deal to limit oil production in Algiers next week as members remain focused on either improving productivity or defending their market share, leading losers of the day in the petroleum sector were OGDC (-0.59%) and PPL (-0.42%),” he added.

Commerce volumes dropped compared with Tuesday’s tally of 903 million.

Shares of 441 companies were traded. While 6 remained unchanged by the end of the day, higher closed, 362 declined,. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs19 billion.