Market watch : Stock market maintains upward trend on IMF bailout

Benchmark KSE-100 index rises 314.41 points.

KARACHI: The stock market continued its upward trend into the final day of the week to finish strong on the euphoria after the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) bailout approval.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index rose 1.4% or 314.41 points to end at 22,765.87 points.

“Details of the IMF signed Extended Fund Facility programme shared by Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance revealed that the IMF has a soft stance towards interest rates and has not focused on monetary tightening and inflation reduction for the first year. This helped boost investor confidence in the market as they believe that the discount rate may remain unchanged in the upcoming monetary policy,” said Adeel Jafri of JS Global. “The cement sector recovered sharply (regardless of the ambiguity on the future of the cartel)”.



“Pakistan equities continued its recovery to test 22,800 on the last day of the week as investors cherished IMF loan signing as Pakistan officially enters into a new programme with strict monitoring. Overall, volumes picked up as institutional investors went on a buying spree in textiles, oil and IPPs,” said Muhammad Sibtain Mustafa of Elixir Research.

“Cements continued to rebound with Maple Leaf Cement (MLCF +5%) and Kohat Cement (KOHC +5%) ending on a second consecutive upper lock as price arrangement between players are expected to hold in the near term,” Mustafa added.

Trade volumes increased to 254 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 218 million shares.



Shares of 354 companies were traded on Friday. At the end of the day 238 stocks closed higher, 87 declined while 29 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs10 billion.

Bank of Punjab was the volume leader with 28.6 million shares gaining Rs0.43 to finish at Rs12.96. It was followed by Fauji Cement with 18.6 million shares gaining Rs0.18 to close at Rs13.5 and Engro Corporation with 12.3 shares gaining Rs6.68 to close at Rs152.19.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs110 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th,  2013.

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