KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday remained buoyant and as the benchmark index crossed the 45,000 barrier.
The momentum, generated by the rupee’s sharp depreciation on Tuesday, continued for the third day.
The KSE-100 Index gained points in the first hour of trading, but later it skidded off track to trade at lower levels around 44,700. Soon after, investors jumped in to buy stocks at attractive valuations, which propelled the index to an intra-day high of 45,032.41 points.
At the end of trading, the benchmark KSE 100-share Index recorded an increase of 384.27 points or 0.86% to settle at 45,030.22.
The market later recovered the lost ground, driven mainly by sharp gains in cement stocks (+2.6%). Notable names were Lucky Cement (+3.1%), DG Khan Cement (+2.9%) and Kohat Cement (+5%) that saw strong institutional flows.
Fertiliser stocks (+1.7%), financial stocks (+1.1%) and exploration and production stocks (+0.7%) contributed to the day’s gains while independent power producers (-0.5%) and gas utilities (-0.5%) closed lower.
Overall, trading volumes increased to 228 million shares compared with Wednesday’s tally of 207 million. Shares of 393 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 202 stocks closed higher, 171 declined while 20 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs9.4 billion.
TRG Pakistan was the volume leader with 22.3 million shares, gaining Rs0.58 to close at Rs38.90. It was followed by Lotte Chemical with 15.1 million shares, gaining Rs0.08 to close at Rs10.45 and Fauji Foods with 12.5 million shares, gaining Rs1.44 to close at Rs34.22.
Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs1.07 billion worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.
On Wednesday, the stocks extended further gains following previous day’s euphoric trading session. Bull-run continued with across the board participation from both local and foreign investors. Active participation was witnessed in all key sectors such as chemical, financials, OMCs and technology etc.
Index ultimately closed at 44,646 points levels, up 336 points. Despite increasing index, traded volumes came down by 6 percent to 207 million shares while value traded also decreased by 17 percent to $79m.
Top volume stocks during the day were LOTCHEM (+2.78 percent), TRG (+4.10 percent) and SSGC (+3.64 percent). Wednesday’s major contribution to the index came from HBL (+3.40 percent), BAHL (+4.02 percent), MCB (+1.49 percent), PPL (+1.26 percent) and ENGRO (+0.83 percent), contributing +222 points to the index. Impressive gains continued in the banking space, where heavyweights such as FABL (+5 percent), HBL (+3.40 percent), NBP (+2.22 percent), MCB (+1.49 percent) and UBL (+1.56 percent) closed in the green zone.
Oil and gas sector added 25 points to index as crude oil prices were up by 2.2 percent. Market participation in terms of volumes dropped by 6 percent, while value dropped by 17 percent.
