The Finance Minister''s announcement of launching a Rs 20 billion Equity Market Opportunity Fund, kept the bears out of the arena for the second consecutive session and the KSE-100 index gained another 233.69 points to close at 11,018.50 points level on Wednesday. Healthy buying was witnessed mainly by mutual funds and a large number of investors.
The KSE-30 index increased by 365.74 points and settled at 12,462.61 points level. The market started on a positive note and the KSE-100 index hit 11,140.57 points intra-day high level, up by 355.76 points. However, profit taking by some cautious investors dropped the index slightly down at its closing level.
Trading activity further improved as the ready market volume increased by 33.33 percent or 45.088 million shares to 180.342 million shares as compared to 135.254 million shares traded a day earlier. The futures market turnover surged by over 96 percent or 14.760 million shares to 30.114 million shares against 15.354 million shares previously.
The overall market capitalisation increased by Rs 70 billion to Rs 3.436 trillion. Trading took place in 315 scrips, out of which 204 scrips closed in the positive and 93 scrips closed in the negative while the value of 18 scrips remained unchanged.
NIB Bank was the star performer of the day with 16.157 million shares and it gained Re. 0.77 to close at Rs 11.25. In the other banking sector stocks, BoP, NBP and Arif Habib Bank increased by Rs 1.12, Rs 5.65 and Re. 0.94 to close at Rs 23.62, Rs 126.90 and Rs 15.69 with 8.091 million shares, 5.317 million shares and 4.658 million shares respectively.
Fresh buying was also witnessed in the cement sector, as Zeal Pak and DG Khan Cement gained Re. 0.37 and Rs 2.67 to close at Rs 2.50 and Rs 56.25 with 6.047 million shares and 4.968 million shares respectively. Arif Habib Sec surged by Rs 5.24 to close at Rs 141.95 with 11.080 million shares. WorldCall Telecom increased by Re. 0.12 to close at Rs 10.52 with 5.968 million shares. Engro Chemical closed at Rs 237.90, up by Rs 10 with 5.080 million shares.
OGDC was the only scrip, out of the top ten volume leaders, which closed in the negative at Rs 117.65, down by Rs 1.74 with 13.576 million shares. Jahangir Siddiqui Co and POL were the highest gainers and gained Rs 18.67 and Rs 14.93 to close at Rs 392.26 and Rs 313.72 respectively while EFU General Insurance and JS Global Capital were the biggest losers and lost Rs 15.44 and Rs 13.42 to close at Rs 294.30 and Rs 283.15 respectively.
Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein Securities said that although adjustment in the oil prices in the international market and freezing of the margins of OMCs did invite offloading at initial highs, buying interest in banking, fertiliser and cement stocks, however, kept the sentiments on the higher side.
Positive numbers did dominate the session. Low volumes, however, horrified the day traders, renewed post midday selling in the oil and gas marketing and exploration stocks, however, led to an intra-day adjustment and the index after achieving an intra-day high of 11,141, up by 355.76 points, closed with a net gain of 2.17 percent.