Market watch: Stock market continues upward trend

Benchmark KSE-100 index gains 79 points.

KARACHI:

The stock market continued its bullish trend with healthy gains on Tuesday, primarily due to active participation of foreign institutions.

The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) 100-share index gained 0.66 per cent or 79.34 points to end at 12,012.02 points.

The oil sector led the gains after global commodities kicked higher, pushing the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL) and Pakistan Oilfields (POL) to steadily outperform the entire session, said Elixir Securities equity dealer Sibtain Mustafa.

Talk of resumption of exploration activities at the Maramzai field, which is expected to boost earnings of listed exploration and production companies for the current fiscal year, also proved to be a catalyst for the sector.

OGDCL and POL gained 1.4 per cent and 0.8 per cent to close at Rs148.21 and Rs328.7, respectively.

However, the broader market was slow as lack of any major triggers hampered participation of investors, added Mustafa.

Trade volumes fell 24 per cent to 60 million shares compared with Monday’s tally of 79 million shares.

The absence of bellwethers from the latest round of earnings announcements made for a relatively slow news day, said Mustafa.

Negotiations between the International Monetary Fund and government officials starting from today (Wednesday) may shape the market‘s direction in the days to come before the announcement of the annual budget.

The market has been trading in the range of 500 points for the past 12 weeks and is consistently following the consolidation pattern in the medium term. With no key triggers in sight, the market is expected to continue the range play on low volumes until it breaks above 12,150 points, predicts Mustafa.

Shares of 358 companies were traded on Tuesday. At the end of the day, 138 stocks closed higher, 123 declined and 97 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs2.6 billion.

Lotte Pakistan PTA was the volume leader with 11.75 million shares, gaining Rs0.1 to finish at Rs15.72. It was followed by JOV and Company with 4.14 million shares, firming Rs0.23 to close at Rs15.72 and Jahangir Siddiqui with 3.45 million shares, declining Rs0.23 to close at Rs6.52.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2011.