KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday gained 294 points to reach 46397 level in early trading.
Yesterday, the PSX benchmark index closed at 46,104, gaining 90 points. Fertilizer stocks, Fauji Fertilizer (FFC) and Engro Fertilizer (EFERT), gained 1.3 percent and 1 percent respectively, as urea sales during 1Q2018 is likely to post 46 percent YoY growth to 1.26mn tons.
Market started off with trading sideways, but soon gained its momentum making an intraday high of +434 to finally close the index at 46,104 levels.
Interest came in Financials where major banks such as MCB (+0.32 percent), HBL (+0.84 percent), UBL (+1.30 percent) NBP (+4.80 percent) closed positive as the Pakistan Banks Association (PBA) has proposed that banks should be paid 2 percent collection charges for performing WHT agent.
Traded volumes slightly plunged by 4 percent to 270m shares, while value traded increased to $119m. Top volume stocks in today’s session were EPCL (-0.38 percent), LOTCHEM (-0.80 percent), KEL (+0.43 percent) and BOP (+0.63 percent).