The stock market extended its bull run in a range bound session on Monday and added 151 points as investors cheered encouraging trade data that showed a contraction in trade deficit for the second consecutive fiscal year.
The bourse received further support from the recovery in global stock markets that rallied to four-week highs coupled with the rise in international oil prices. Investors took cue from both the factors and cherry-picked stocks throughout the session.
The MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan climbed 1.8% to its highest since February, with bullish sentiment spilling over into other markets.
Earlier, trading kicked off with a spike at the local bourse and the uptrend continued for the rest of the day. Oil-related stocks turned attractive owing to the recovery in global crude prices and helped the market close with modest gains.
At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 151.39 points, or 0.43%, to settle at 35,202.77 points.
Arif Habib Limited, in its report, stated that the market went up 187 points during the session and closed comfortably above 35,200 points.
“Exploration and production, oil marketing, cement and pharmaceutical sectors performed well,” it said. “However, profit-booking was witnessed in pharmaceutical stocks.”
Fertiliser sector stocks endured price losses on the back of profit-booking. In the chemical sector, both Lotte Chemical and Engro Polymer performed well with the former closing at its upper circuit.
The technology sector led the volumes with trading in 66.8 million shares, followed by chemical companies (48.7 million) and cable firms (39.2 million).
JS Global analyst Maaz Mulla said the market remained volatile throughout the day, touching intra-day high of +187 points and intra-day low of -49 points. The benchmark index closed at 35,203, up 151 points.
The daily traded value stood at $67 million while volumes came in at 332 million shares, up 89%.
Major contribution to the total market volumes came from Pak Elektron (+7.3%), TRG Pakistan (+2.9%) and Lotte Chemical (+8.8%) with cumulative trading in 106 million shares.
Furthermore, major movers of the market were Pakistan Petroleum (+1.2%), PSO (+2.2%), Indus Motor (+4.7%), Mari Petroleum (+1%), Oil and Gas Development Company (+0.5%) and HBL (+0.4%).
The cement sector gained as investors found trading opportunities. Cherat Cement (+3.6%), Maple Leaf Cement (+2.2%), DG Khan Cement (+1.9%) and Kohat Cement (+1.6%) remained in the green zone.
Pharmaceutical and exploration and production sectors enjoyed the upward trend where GlaxoSmithKline (+4.9%), AGP Limited (+3.5%), IBL HealthCare Limited (+3.5%), Pakistan Petroleum (+1.2%), Oil and Gas Development Company (+0.5%) and Pakistan Oilfields (+0.8%) were the major gainers.
“Moving forward, we expect the market to follow the same trend and our top picks are cement and oil marketing sectors,” the analyst said.
Overall, trading volumes soared to 332.3 million shares compared with Friday’s tally of 175.8 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs11.2 billion.
Shares of 380 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 257 stocks closed higher, 94 declined and 29 remained unchanged.
TRG Pakistan was the volume leader with 37.71 million shares, gaining Rs0.97 to close at Rs34.21. It was followed by Pak Elektron with 37.66 million shares, gaining Rs1.79 to close at Rs26.25 and Lotte Chemical with 30.8 million shares, gaining Rs0.9 to close at Rs11.07.
Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs304.7 million worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.
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