KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange regained the overnight losses till midday and added 174.61 points to reach 34742.13 points level.
The stocks recorded the highest trading level of 34755.94 points and lowest level of 34474.49 points, with the volume of 109 million shares, having about Rs4.6 billion value. As many as 277 companies were active; of which 153 advanced, 105 declined and 19 remained unchanged.
Technology & communication was the top traded sector with 21,907,000 volume, while cement remained second with 19,645,900 volume.
The three top traded companies were PTCL XD with a volume of 14,984,000 and price per share of 14.79 (0.52), K-Electric Ltd with a volume 7,413,000 of price per share of 7.23 (0.16), Byco Petroleum with a volume 5,644,000 of price per share of 21 (-0.02).
The top three gainers were Bata (Pak)XD with price per share 3350 (45), Khyber Tobacco with price per share of 338.10 (16.10) and Punjab Oil price per share of 296.99 (13.51).
The top three losers were Nestle Pak XD with price per share of 7060 (-135), Island Textile with price per share of 800 (-32.13) and Shezan Inter per share of 445 (-15).
On Monday, volatility prevailed on the first session of the week as Pakistan Stock Exchange benchmark 100-share index shed 151.77 points to close at 34567.52 points. The oil and gas sector remained under pressure after global crude oil prices came down from their high over the weekend to trade around $46.80/barrel (Brent). Major laggards of the aforementioned sector were NRL (down 2.30%), ATRL (down 2.07%) and OGDC that decreased by 1.89%. Profit-taking was witnessed in the cement and banking sectors amid increased political noise and uncertainty. Volume decreased by 27% to 185m shares while value decreased by 47% to Rs 7.0b/67$m. After rising last week, profit-taking was seen in banking stocks. MCB, HBL and UBL declined by 2.4%, 0.8% and 0.5% respectively.
