KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday closed trading week on a bullish note with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining 230 points to close at 43,740.
The index showed some mixed activity in the first half of the trading session but adopted a positive momentum in the second half. It hit a day’s low of 43,412 points and reached a day’s high of 43,759 points near the end of the trading.
Volumes edged up as 229.9 million shares worth Rs9.6 billion changed hands compared to 211.94m shares worth Rs10b traded on the previous trading day. Of the 415 traded scrips, 191 advanced, 207 declined and 17 remained unchanged.
Overall, the engineering sector dominated trading with 37.38m shares traded, while the chemical and cement sectors followed with 28.09m and 25.85m shares changing hands.
Yesterday, the PSX made an intra-day high of 395 points vs a low of 63 points, rallying by 271 points to close at 43,510 points. Major contribution to the index came from LUCK (up 5%), ENGRO (2.46%), DGKC (4.04%) and MLCF (5%), contributing 170 points to the index.
Moreover, CPI number for Feb-2018 clocked in at 3.80%, which came below experts’ expectation of 4.00%. Banking space closed mixed in trading session as UBL (up 0.08%) closed positive, while on the other hand MCB (down 0.42%) and HBL (0.10%) closed in the negative zone. E&P sector closed in the red as crude oil prices edged lower in the international market. POL (down 0.89%) and PPL (0.62%) were the major laggards of the sector.
Traded volumes improved by 40% DoD to 212m shares while value traded picked up to $93m. LOTCHEM (+1.02%) led the volumes with more than 11m shares exchanging hands.
