KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained bullish till midday after adding 219 points to reach 41510.74 points level on Wednesday.
The stocks bounced back in early trading and gained 263 points to reach 41555 points level.
On Tuesday, the bears dominated the PSX for most of the day and as a result the benchmark 100-share index lost another 192 points and closed at 41,291 points.
EFERT and FATIMA from the fertilizer sector declared their result where EFERT (up 2.73%) posted an EPS of Rs2.11 (3Q2017) and announced a cash payout of Rs3.0/share, while FATIMA (down 0.42%) posted an EPS of Rs1.13 (3Q2017) with no payout. Overall cement sector closed negative where heavyweights DGKC (down 1.69%), FCCL (4.51%), CHCC (0.92%) and PIOC (4.34%) were the major victims of the sector, stated dealer at JS Global. Top 5 index point decliners were POL (down 1.3%), NESTLE (1.8%), NBP (1.4%), PSMC (2%) & AICL (1.4%), eroding 32 points, while HBL (up 1.3%), MCB (1.7%), SNGP (5%), HUBC (3%) & PPL (1.5%) added 170 points.
Local mutual funds were net sellers of $3m whereas local banks & insurance bought $1.1m and $1.5m worth of shares, respectively.
A rally was witnessed in the steel sector on back of NTC imposing anti-dumping duty on imported re-bars. ASL (up 4.55%), ASTL (2.21%) and ISL (0.92%) closed positive. E&P sector closed higher as compared to last trading day as crude oil prices edged higher in the global economy. POL (up 1.80%) and PPL (0.33%) were the major gainers of the mentioned sector.
Volume fell 7% d/d while traded value was down 16%. TRG (up 1.65%) led the volume chart with 20m shares exchanging hands.
