KARACHI: After witnessing a volatile day, the Pakistan Stock Exchange Tuesday managed to close 54.86 points to reach 39525.75 points level.
The stocks recorded the highest trading level of 39719.13 points and lowest level of 39293.37 points, with the volume of 178.17 million shares and value of Rs7.18 billion. As many as 347 companies were active; of which 181 advanced, 150 declined and 16 remained unchanged.
Lotte Chemical was the volume leader with 17.43 million shares, adding Rs0.63 to reach Rs7.37. It was followed by TRG Pak Ltd with 14.85 million shares, gaining Rs0.58 to end at Rs29.75 and Fauji Cement with 14.62 million shares, adding Rs14.62 to close at Rs23.68.
The top three gainers were Bata (Pak) with price per share of 2375 (95), Sanofi-Aventis with price per share of 1161.53 (55.31) and Colgate Palmolive of 2882 (42).
The top three losers were Khyber Tobacco with price per share of 1506.32 (-79.27), Wyeth Pak Ltd with price per share of 1189.80 (-50.16) and Service Ind. Ltd share of 711.82 (-28.18).
Earlier, the stocks opened bearish after a long weekend and shed 178 points to drop to 39293 level in early trading. The Pakistan Stock Exchange remained bearish till midday as the benchmark 100-index shed 26 points to reach 39445 level.
Last week, the market witnessed some recovery in the end, helping index close in the green zone after five weeks of consecutive red closings.
Bottom fishing in heavyweight stocks helped KSE-100 index record increase of 825pts (+2.1 percent WoW) to close at 39,471. This also coincided with news of PSX looking to introduce Category B that will include companies eligible for margin trading system and deliverable futures. Foreign institutional investors (net selling of $5m during the week) and banks (net selling of $4m) continued to offload positions amidst ambiguous political and economic climate.
Overall activity remained weak with average traded value of $52m/day (down 14 percent WoW), however average traded volume inched up to 138m shares/day (+2 percent WoW). Most of value buying activity remained concentrated into heavyweight sectors such as (1) banks (+5 percent WoW), (2) fertilizers (+3 percent WoW), (3) cements (+3 percent WoW) and (4) oil and gas marketing (+2 percent WoW). On the other hand, sectors such as (1) food and personal care (down 3 percent WoW) and (2) refinery (down 1 percent WoW) etc. witnessed declines.
Foreign investors remained net sellers during the week with $5.4m selling, however, this was easily absorbed by local investors where individuals ($2m) and insurance companies ($1.6m) emerged as the largest buyers on the local front. Most of the foreign selling was witnessed in cement ($6.5m) and textile ($1.1m) sectors whereas fertilizer ($3.8m) and oil & gas ($1.3m) sectors attracted inflows. On sectoral front, banks (+5 percent WoW), industrial metals (+5 percent WoW) and engineering (+3 percent WoW) closed on a positive note whereas food producers (-3 percent WoW) ended the week on a negative note.
