KSE greets year with over 400-point gain

Sentiment at the Karachi share market, on the first trading day of the new year, remained positive and the benchmark KSE-100 index closed above 33,000 points level. On Friday, the market opened in the green zone during the intraday session touching 33,255 points highest level. End of the session, the KSE-100 index closed at 33,229 points compared with 32,816 points Thursday, up by 413 points.
Analysts said the Prime Minister''s Voluntary Tax Compliance Scheme, lower CPI inflation for December and ever highest foreign exchange reserves put positive impact on the market and the market alone gained over 400 points as foreign investors turned optimistic. Khurram Schehzad, analyst at Arif Habib, said CPI inflation for the month of December 2015 clocked in at 3.19 percent YoY, which was lower than expectations. Therefore, the market is expecting another cut in the key discount rate in the next monetary policy to be announced this month. He said that bullish trend is likely to continue in the next week. Moving forward, "we expect this positive trend will continue, but profit-taking can be witnessed," he added.
With cheerful reports on economic front, most of investors preferred to set new positions, resulting in trading activity at the ready counter higher than previous session. Overall, some 124 million shares were traded Friday compared to 99.6 million a day earlier. The market capitalisation surged by Rs 78 billion to Rs 7.025 trillion up from Rs 6.947 trillion. Daily trading value also increased to Rs 6.5 billion from Rs 5.5 billion.
Trading took place in 326 companies, of which 233 closed in green zone, 73 in the red, while share prices of 20 companies remained unchanged. Fauji Cement, 1st Dawood Bank, D.G.K. Cement, Pak Electron and TRG Pak Ltd were volume leaders with 16.6 million, 11.7 million, 5.5 million, 5.3 million and 5.2 million shares, respectively. Pak Tobacco and Exide (Pak) were the top gainers with Rs 54.80 and Rs 31.61 to close at Rs 1,168.99 and Rs 938.75, respectively. Wyeth Pak Ltd and Bata (Pak) were the top losers with Rs 110.00 and Rs 104.45 to close at Rs 2,210.00 and Rs 3,165.25, respectively.