KARACHI: The equity market climbed up by 636 points on Wednesday following expectation of rate hike in monetary policy to be announced on March 29.
The benchmark KSE-100 of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 38,965 points as against 38,329 points showing an increase of 636 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market jumped consecutively on the second day, just before the announcement of Monetary Policy on March 29th.
Although rate hike expectations are talk of the town, market apparently didn’t pay heed to such warnings and buying activity was seen across the board.
Highlight of the volumes was UNITY’s right, which saw trading volume of 80M against total market volume of 228M shares (35 percent).
Cement sector led the volumes with 18M shares, resulting in DGKC, LUCK, and MLCF trading at and near upper circuits. Besides, WTL and BOP among Technology and Banking Sectors contributed significantly to trading volumes.
Sectors contributing to the performance include E&P (+118 points), Fertilizer (+99 points), Cement (+97 points), Banks (+67 points), O&GMCs (+59 points).
Volumes increased significantly from 86.4mn shares to 228.7mn shares (+165 percent DoD). Average traded value also increased by 73 percent to reach US$ 43.8mn as against US$ 25.3mn.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITYR1, WTL, KEL, BOP and UNITY, which formed 55 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively include PPL (+67 points), LUCK (+45 points), ENGRO (+36 points), UBL (+36 points), and OGDC (+33 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include NESTLE (-16 points), MCB (-13 points), MUREB (-5 points), HBL (-4 points) and INDU (-3 points).
