KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange witnessed bullish trend during the fourth consecutive week on the back of local investors and institutional support.

BRIndex100 gained 182.37 points on week-on-week basis to close at 4,058.96 points. Average daily volumes stood at 360.288 million shares.

BRIndex30 increased by 926.49 points to close at 20733.88 points with average daily turnover of 250.670 million shares.

KSE-100 index surged by 1,650.82 points or 4.39 percent on week-on-week basis and closed at 39,258.44 points. Trading activities however slightly reduced as average daily volumes on ready counter decreased by 5.5 percent to 389.84 million shares as compared to previous week's average of 412.47 million shares. Average daily trading value inched up by 3.5 percent to Rs 16.90 billion.

Total market capitalization increased by Rs 222 billion or 3.1 percent to Rs 7.294 trillion.

"Despite rollover week and broader expectations of correction ahead of Eid, the stock market maintained its positive momentum in all the four trading sessions during the outgoing week," an analyst at AKD Securities said.

The foreign investors however remained on selling side and withdrew $9.701 million during this week. The KSE-100 index gained 4.39 percent on week-on-week basis to close the week at 39,258 points. Overall, the market returned 14.1 percent in July 2020 - the highest return in the month of July in the past 17 years.

Sector-wise, all the main-board sectors barring Textile composite closed in green, with Autos (up 8.5 percent), Cement (up 7.3 percent) Engineering (up 5.6 percent) gaining on expectations of hastened demand recovery post-COVID-19 while Banks returning 5.6 percent on the potential end of easing cycle following MPC's decision not to hold the scheduled meeting in July 2020.

Amongst the main-board, top gainers during the week were TRG (up 24.1 percent), HCAR (up 23.2 percent), ATRL (up 19.2 percent), HMB (up 14.8 percent), CHCC (up 13.1 percent), while NESTLE (down 3.7 percent), FFBL (down 3.5 percent), ARPL (down 3.0 percent), ANL (down 2.6 percent) and UNITY (down 2.1 percent) were the major laggards.

An analyst at JS Global Capital said the market closed positive throughout the week. This makes it 23 out of the last 25 trading sessions (starting June 26th) that the index closed in the green zone, taking cumulative returns to a staggering 16.5 percent during this brief period.

Average daily volumes declined by 5.5 percent, but were higher than 234 million/day during year-to-date in calendar year 2020, showing that sentiment has been clearly recovering.

It seems that the market is already over Covid-19 as seen by the persistent across the board rally in stocks.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020