Market watch: KSE-100 powers past 40,000-mark in bullish trade

Benchmark index gains 503.66 points to settle at 40,353.62

KARACHI:

Bulls held ground at the stock market on Thursday and helped extend gains from the preceding session on back of surge in global financial markets.

An uptick in global equities enticed market participants at the local bourse to renew investments and assume fresh positions, thus pushing the KSE-100 index past the 40,000-point barrier. Surging global oil prices further encouraged investment in local oil scrips and aided them to close the session in green.

Trading kicked off with a spike and the market marched on an upward trajectory till mid-day, following which the index witnessed a brief slump. Trading continued in a narrow range, however, a buying spree in the final hours pushed the index higher.

At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 503.66 points, or 1.26%, to settle at 40,353.62 points.

Arif Habib Limited, in its report, stated exploration and production, oil and gas marketing companies, banks and cements sector stocks contributed to the buying activity on the back of upcoming earnings season.

“Hascol’s financial results saw the stock rebound from trading below LDCP to trading near upper circuit post announcement of financial results.”

“Among banks, the Bank of Punjab continued seeing negative impact of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) direction given by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday and the stock saw negative closing from LDCP,” the report added.

JS Global analyst Danish Ladhani said the market remained positive throughout the trading session and once again value buying was witnessed by the financial institutions.

Major scrips that contributed to the positive index close were OGDC (4.3%), PSO (4.9%), PPL (2.5%), HBL (1.3%), FFC (1.7%), LUCK (1.3%), POL (2.5%) and UBL (1.9%).

Furthermore, HASCOL (4.5%) announced 1QCY20 consolidated loss of Rs6.63 per shares with no cash pay-out.

“Going forward, we expect the market to remain positive and to recommend investors to sell on strength,” the analyst said.

Overall, trading volumes rose to 476.9 million shares compared with Wednesday’s tally of 431.9 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs15.8 billion.

Shares of 411 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 240 stocks closed higher, 115 declined and 16 remained unchanged.

Hascol Petroleum was the volume leader with 107.8 million shares, gaining Rs0.76 to close at Rs17.58. It was followed by Unity Foods with 56.3 million shares, gaining Rs0.73 to close at Rs16.59 and TRG Pakistan with 20.7 million shares, gaining Rs1.2 to close at Rs46.39.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs87.6 million worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.