KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange continued its upward journey in early trading and added 214 points to take the tally to 44860 level on Thursday, the last day of week before a long weekend.
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.
