Business desk
KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday succumbed to selling pressure after closing positive for four consecutive sessions and lost 75 points in topsy-turvy trading.
The benchmark KSE-100 index traded between hope and despair, which eventually let loose the bears, who pulled the bourse into the red.
Investors kept a close watch on political news after PTI chief Imran Khan’s alleged audio leaks regarding horse trading surfaced on social media. Moreover, concerns over the upcoming monetary policy, scheduled to be announced on Monday (October 10), Moody’s negative rating and uncertainty ahead of the Pakistan-International Monetary Fund (due next week) caused jitters in the stock market.
Moody’s Investors Service, a day earlier, downgraded the rating of the Government of Pakistan’s local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt and senior unsecured MTN programme, from B3 to Caa1.
The benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 42,085.25 points with a decrease of 75.32 points or 0.18%.
Shares of 344 companies were traded during the session. At the close of trading, 134 scrips closed in the green, 187 in the red, and 23 remained unchanged. Overall trading volumes declined to 313.34 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 442.58 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs9.42 billion.
