Market watch: Despite heavy foreign selling, KSE-100 advances 355 points

Benchmark index gains 0.83% to finish trading at 43,268.29

KARACHI: The stock market, following a slow start, rallied on institutional support on Monday as the KSE-100 Index advanced 355 points, surpassing 43,200 to close its third successive session in the black.

After a brief dip earlier in the day, the index started gaining momentum as buying interest emerged in many key stocks.

Attractive valuations and calm on the political front led investors to make fresh entry into the market. Interest was mostly seen in auto, oil, cement, banking and fertiliser sectors, which propelled the index.

At close, the benchmark KSE 100-share Index recorded an increase of 355.48 points or 0.83% to settle at 43,268.29.

Elixir Securities' analyst Ali Raza said equities continued their winning streak as the benchmark KSE-100 Index gained 1.7% in three consecutive sessions.



"The market had a slow start, but later institutional flows in key sectors such as oil (up 1.3%), fertiliser (up 1.2%), financial (up 0.9%) and cement (up 0.9%) helped the index to regain the momentum of last week," Raza said.

Gas utilities Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (+5%) and Sui Southern Gas Company (+5%), were in the limelight which hit their respective upper price limits and accounted for 12% of total market activity.

This came after the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority issued a tariff regime whereby the return on assets for the companies would be computed on the basis of weighted average cost of capital.

"We see index-heavy financial stocks drawing most interest and supporting the market, however, impending verdict by the Financial Action Task Force on Pakistan's inclusion in the grey list (for allegedly failing to stop terrorist financing) will keep the overall market performance in check this week," the analyst added.



Overall, trading volumes increased to 118 million shares compared with Friday's tally of 59.23 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs7.02 billion.

Shares of 337 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 184 stocks closed higher, 138 declined while 15 remained unchanged.

The Bank of Punjab was the volume leader with 11.7 million shares, losing Rs0.01 to close at Rs12.07. It was followed by Pak Elektron with 8.9 million shares, gaining Rs0.24 to close at Rs38.35 and Sui Southern Gas Company with 7.7 million shares, gaining Rs1.74 to close at Rs36.67.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs1.47 billion worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.