KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Monday witnessed highly volatile session, however after moving both ways, closed on strong positive note with healthy gains on the back of fresh buying on attractive low levels at the fag end. The benchmark KSE-100 Index hit 44,557.10 points intraday high and 43,639.17 points intraday low level before closing at 44,461.01 points with a net gain of 476.77 points or 1.08 percent.

Trading activity however remained low due to investors’ lack of trust as daily volumes on the ready counter decreased to 208.122 million shares as compared to 241.639 million shares traded on previous session while total daily traded value on ready counter declined to Rs 6.063 billion against previous session’s Rs 6.737 billion.

BRIndex100 increased by 66.31 points or 1.5 percent to close at 4,500.82 points with total daily turnover of 177.942 million shares.

BRIndex30 surged by 328.47 points or 2.06 percent to close at 16,293.54 points with total daily trading volumes of 118.084 million shares. Foreign investors however remained net sellers of shares worth $561,947. The market capitalization increased by Rs 75 billion to Rs 7.612 trillion. Out of total 340 active scrips, 226 closed in positive and only 96 in negative while the value of 18 stocks remained unchanged.

Agritech Limited was the volume leader with 15.675 million shares and gained Rs 1.00 to close at Rs 5.81 followed by TPL Properties that increased by Rs 2.16 to close at Rs 31.09 with 14.272 million shares. Flying Cement (R) closed at Rs 0.99, down Rs 0.10 with 12.934 million shares.

Rafhan Maize and Indus Motor Co were the top gainers increasing by Rs 233.33 and Rs 55.90 respectively to close at Rs 11000.00 and Rs 1473.90 while Colgate Palmolive and Unilever Foods were the top losers declining by Rs 83.00 and Rs 50.00 respectively to close at Rs 2172.00 and Rs 21400.00.

An analyst at Topline Securities said that the market opened on a negative note on the backdrop of ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and increased political noise, as the index declined to make an intraday low of negative 339 points, down by 0.77 percent. However some recovery was observed in latter hours of trade, as value investors came in to accumulate near 44,000 index level, as a result index gained to close at 44,461 level, plus 477 points; up by 1.08 percent.

Bank, Cement, Fertilizer and Power sectors’ stocks took the lead where MEBL, LUCK, ENGRO and HUBC cumulatively added 164 points to the index. On the flip side, COLG, NBP and TRG lost value to weigh down on the index by 36 points.

BR Automobile Assembler Index increased by 139.86 points or 1.54 percent to close at 9,240.66 points with total turnover of 1.305 million shares.

BR Cement Index surged by 99.42 points or 1.87 percent to close at 5,421.87 points with 7.938 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index gained 39.01 points or 0.39 percent to close at 10,054.71 points with 10.112 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index added 74.73 points or 1.3 percent to close at 5,834.07 points with 10.025 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index inched up by 66.04 points or 1.71 percent to close at 3,918.53 points with 7.451 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 3,299.77 points, up 40.03 points or 1.23 percent with 37.231 million shares.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that the market opened under pressure as inflationary concerns arise due to higher fuel prices and overheated commodities cycle. In the first hour of trading, cement sector stayed in the red zone due to higher international coal prices. Main board activity remained gloomy. On the flip-side, activity continued to remain side-ways as market witnessed hefty volumes in the 3rd tier stocks. In the last trading hour, value buying was observed which led the index to close in the green zone.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (up 99.1 points), E&P (up 81.8 points), Cement (up 69.7 points), Power (up 36.0 points) and Banks (up 35.8 points).

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022

Comments

Comments are closed.