Fresh buying by local and foreign investors supported the Pakistan Stock Exchange to close in positive territory Wednesday. The benchmark KSE-100 index increased by 560.01 points to 45,474.46 points. Trading activity also improved as daily trading volumes increased to 346.468 million shares as compared to 294.973 million shares traded Tuesday. Foreign investors remained net buyers of shares worth $9.5 million.
The market capitalization increased by Rs 78 billion to Rs 9.278 trillion. Out of total 377 active scrips, 190 closed in positive, 173 in negative while the value of 14 stocks remained unchanged. TRG was the volume leader with 23.270 million shares. However, it declined by Rs 1.63 to close at Rs 42.72 followed by Bank of Punjab that lost Rs 0.05 to close at Rs 10.81 with 20.204 million shares. K-Electric decreased by Rs 0.10 to close at Rs 6.85 with 20.028 million shares.
Service Industries and Millat Tractors were the top gainers with Rs 49.00 and Rs 46.06, respectively to close at Rs 1,359.00 and 1,336.04. Pak Services and Wyeth Pak were the top losers with Rs 47.50 and Rs 42.25, respectively to close at Rs 902.50 and Rs 2,038.75.
Arhum Ghous at JS Global Capital said that the market had been astonishingly volatile in the trading session, repeatedly going to extreme ends throughout the day. The benchmark index fluctuated between negative 1,088 points and plus 851 points to close up 560 points. The decline came from redemptions of local mutual funds, where increase came in the latter hours with buying interest on attractive valuations. NML (up 4.8 percent), HUBC (up 3.8 percent), ISL (up 4.3 percent) and SNGP (up 4.8 percent) from the KSE-100 index closed close to their respective upper circuits, cumulatively contributing 161 points to the index. Heavyweight stocks from the banking sector all closed in the green zone, including HBL (up 0.8 percent), UBL (up 2.5 percent), MCB (up 2.3 percent), ABL (up 0.5 percent) and NBP (up 0.3 percent) with total contribution of 169 points to the KSE-100 index.
An analyst at Topline Securities said that the activity at the bourse exhibited an epic battle between the bulls and bears, as evident by the intraday index curve drawing out 7 major inflection points and covering a span of almost 7,000 points in both directions. The index traded in an extremely volatile range of 1,939 points/4.3 percent, last seen on June 1st post MSCI upgrade. Given the prevailing political situation and an overnight decline crude oil prices, the market opened on a negative note. Initially bears were in control, but lost steam as they pushed the index below 44,000 (last breach below 44,000 was in December 2016), giving way to bulls who eventually triumphed and led the index to close up 560 points. Index point leaders were HUBC (up 3.8 percent), ENGRO (up 2.9 percent), UBL (up 2.5 percent), DGKC (up 4.6 percent) and SNGP (up 4.8 percent) adding 257 points; while PSEL (down 5 percent, TRG (down 3.7 percent), PPL (down 0.9 percent), DAWH (down 1.4 percent) and PIBTL (down 3.1 percent), withheld 75 points from the index. On the sector front, Banks contributed 160 points, Cement 101 points, Power 84 points, Fertilizer 64 points and Auto Assemblers 59 points; whereas Transport shed 19 points.
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