Market watch: Cement, oil and banking stocks lead rally

Benchmark KSE-100 index climbs 87 points.

KARACHI: Bourse closed bullish on quarter end close led by cement, oil and banking sector stocks, however, trading activity remained thin on security concerns in the city.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index rose 0.57% or 87.23 points to end at the 15,444.82 point level.

Rebounding international oil prices brought renewed buying interest in oil stocks while better cement dispatches for September kept the sector on investors’ radar, said Samar Iqbal, equity dealer at Topline Securities.

Trade volumes jumped to 114 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 87 million shares.

“Speculation ahead of the announcement of the monetary policy on October 5 and renewed foreign interest supported the climb despite concerns about rupee depreciation in the face of the looming of $109 million International Monetary Fund loan repayment,” said Ahsan Mehanti, analyst at Arif Habib Corporation

Analysts expect the government to slash interest rates to single-digits from the current 10.5% in the new monetary policy as the inflation for September clocked in at 9.5% for the third month running.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources has reportedly assured oil marketing companies that it will shore up their margins on petrol and diesel enhancing the index heavyweight oil and gas sector’s profitability.

Shares of 350 companies were traded on Friday. At the end of the day 171 stocks closed higher, 145 declined while 34 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs3.8 billion.

Bank Al Habib was the volume leader with 13.6 million shares losing Rs0.28 to finish at Rs28.31. It was followed by DG Khan Cement with 12.6 million shares gaining Rs1.14 to close at Rs50.30 and Lafarge Cement Pakistan with 4.3 million shares gaining Rs0.22 to close at Rs5.85.

The cement sector remained in the spotlight for the whole week as it was earlier reported that cement exports surged by 20.38% to 1.2 million tons worth $91.4 million in the first two months of the fiscal year 2012-13, according to the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs12.9 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2012.