Market watch: Bourse turns bullish with 81-point rise

A topsy-turvy session ended on a positive note at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Friday as bulls pushed the benchmark KSE-100 index higher and it ended the bearish spell of past three sessions.

The KSE-100 index opened down and continued to slide during the day as market participants were on the sidelines. Buying was limited with investor confidence remaining weak ahead of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting on Pakistan’s status.

Moreover, market players were cautious ahead of the approval of budget proposals for the next fiscal year. However, activity in selected sectors helped the bulls to turn market’s direction.

At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 81.04 points, or 0.17%, to settle at 48,238.67.

Arif Habib Limited, in its report, stated that the market traded in a narrow range of -135 points and +254 points. It closed the session up by 81 points.

Refinery, cement, fertiliser, oil and gas marketing and technology sectors inched up and provided support to the index, which traded in the positive zone.

“However, concerns of redemption among some mutual funds added to the selling pressure,” the report added.

Sectors contributing to the performance included banks (+77 points), cement (+58 points), refinery (+39 points), technology (+19 points) and vanaspati (-12 points).

Individually, stocks that contributed positively to the index included Lucky Cement (+31 points), National Refinery (+20 points), Pakistan Oilfields (+20 points), TRG Pakistan (+19 points) and Fauji Fertiliser (+14 points).

Stocks that contributed negatively were HBL (-63 points), Millat Tractors (-15 points), Oil and Gas Development Company (-14 points), MCB (-13 points) and Unity Foods (-12 points).

Overall trading volumes fell to 750.6 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 1.1 billion. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs20.7 billion.

Shares of 405 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 222 stocks closed higher, 163 declined and 20 remained unchanged.

Hum Network was the volume leader with 88.1 million shares, gaining Rs0.6 to close at Rs9.12. It was followed by WorldCall Telecom with 76.5 million shares, gaining Rs0.11 to close at Rs4.12 and Byco Petroleum with 70.9 million shares, gaining Rs0.5 to close at Rs12.86.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs642.9 million worth of shares during the trading session, according to data compiled by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.