Market watch : Cement, banking stocks move market upwards

Index adds 23 points as textile sector comes back into focus.

KARACHI: After the formal inception of EU’s trade package, the stock market closed Thursday with moderate gains amid markedly greater trade volumes. Interest in the cement, banking and textile sector helped keep the index in the green zone.

“Trades remained higher amid bullish activity in the early session on foreign interest,” said Arif Habib Corp analyst Ahsan Mehanti. “Institutional profit-taking witnessed in the later session on concerns for uncertainty in global stocks and commodities after Europe austerity protests and recessionary data affected sentiments.”

The KSE benchmark 100-share index added 0.14% or 22.55 points to end at the 16,143.07 points level. Trade volumes surged to 236 million shares, compared with Wednesday’s tally of 144 million shares. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs4.95 billion. Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs99.90 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Shares of 379 companies were traded on Thursday. At the end of the day 206 stocks closed higher, 120 declined while 53 remained unchanged.

“Investors favoured banks in anticipation that December’s policy rate decision will mark the end of interest rate cuts by the central bank and as full year reporting draws close for the sector,” said Ovais Ahsan, analyst at JS Global. “The bulls dominated the textile sector as Nishat Mills (+1.6%), Nishat Chunian (+4.6%) and Azgard Nine (+10%) rallied on the official notification of the EU trade package for Pakistan, [which is] expected to provide greater market access for the Pakistani textile sector.”

Fauji Cement was the volume leader with 38.56 million shares gaining Rs0.26 to finish at Rs6.83. It was followed by Maple Leaf Cement with 29.75 million shares gaining Rs0.75 to close at Rs12.09 and Azgard Nine with 23.03 million shares gaining Rs0.72 to close at Rs7.92.

“Fresh buying in Fauji Cement and Maple Leaf Cement brought the stocks in the limelight, as 30% of the volume traded [on Thursday was confined to] these two stocks only,” reported equity dealer Samar Iqbal, who is associated with Topline Securities. “The fertiliser sector witnessed profit-taking amid lower fertiliser offtake,” she added.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2012.