Karachi share market on Friday, the last trading day of the week, witnessed mixed activity due to uncertainty over the March 17 national assembly session and nomination for the prime minister slot. However, the KSE-100 index closed with a gain of 12.55 points, rising from 5,074.92 points of Thursday to 15087.47 points.
While the KSE-30 index loss 39.97 points and closed at 18495.54 points from 18,535.51 points. All shares index closed at 10714.35 with a loss of 3.86 points. "There were negative rumours regarding national assembly maiden session on March 17, due to which the market took a downward trend after opening on a positive note. However, later investment in the cement and fertiliser sectors pushed the market to positive side," said Ahsan Mehanti, analyst at Shehzad Chamdia Securities.
He said that cement scripts were in limelight on slashing of customs duty on import of cement and higher prices in UAE. "Higher DAP prices in international commodity markets attracted interest in fertilizer scripts including Enfro, FFBL, which helped market to recover", he added.
Trading was dull and the ready market volume declined to 218.249 million shares as compared to last trading session's 311.909 million shares, while futures market volume also decreased to 68.413 million shares against 87.229 million shares. Market capitalisation declined by Rs 9.766 to Rs 4.636 trillion as compared to Rs 4.645 trillion a day earlier.
Trading took place in 331 scrips, out of which 132 scrips closed in positive and 154 scrips closed in negative, while the value of 45 scrips remained unchanged. The cement and banking sectors performed well, while oil sector scrips were also favourite of investors due to the soaring international oil prices.
PTCL was the leading scrip with 18.49 million shares and up by Rs 0.75 per shares to Rs 45.75 per share, while D G Khan cement gained Rs 0.90 to Rs 111.15 per shares with trading volume of 17.72 million shares.
Bank of Punjab declined by Rs 3.20 and closed at Rs 86.50 with 14.876 million shares. Lucky Cement also dipped by Rs 0.40 to Rs 138.45 with 14.63 million shares. Pakistan Cement increased by Rs 0.65 to Rs 11.10 with trading volume of 11.67 million shares and some 9 million shares of Engro Chemical were traded and its prices gained Rs 8.33 to Rs 334.15.
Arif Habib Sec decreased by Rs 2.90 to close at Rs 172.95 with 8.2 million shares and OGDC was up by Rs 0.25 to closed at Rs 134.20 with trading of 7.69 million shares. EFU Life and EFU General were the highest gainers and gained Rs 37.35 and Rs 35.10 to close at Rs 784.80 and Rs 738.05 respectively. AKD Capital and Shell Gas LPG were the highest losers and lost Rs 20 and Rs 13 to close at Rs 685 and Rs 247 respectively.