Bullish sentiment dominated the Lahore Stock Exchange on Friday and equities extended further gains across the board amid increasing turnover on account of institutional and retail investors' buying in oil, fertiliser and banking shares.
The LSE-25 index jumped by 60.72 points to close at 1507.70 against 1446.98 of Thursday while transaction volume substantially climbed to 22.776 million shares as compared to last day's volume of 15.265 million shares.
The market continued rising trend and stayed in positive zone throughout the day. The market opened fractionally ahead of last day's close and showed vertical rise to the level of 1492 just in an hour. The market, after staying around this level for about three-hours, witnessed fresh buying and crossed the barrier of 1550 to touch 1519 but, following profit taking, it could not sustain at this level and slid to 1507 at close.
Pak Oil Fields, PSO, Attock Refinery, PPL, and OGDC posted gain of Rs 5.73, Rs 4.77, Rs 2.28, Rs 1.95 and Rs 1.70, respectively. Engro Chemical and Fauji Fertiliser also maintained upward trend and further improved by Rs 5.67 and Rs 4.10 respectively. Among the banking sector shares, National Bank, Habib Bank and MCB Bank managed to gain Rs 2.68, Rs 2.96 and Rs 4.51, respectively. Adamjee Insurance with trading of 232,700 shares also appreciated by Rs 2.15.
However, Pioneer Cement and Shifa Int'l Hospital declined by Re 1 each, while Shell Pak and Nishat Mills were down by 50 paisa and 49 paisa respectively. NIB Bank was the market leader whose 7.682 million shares changed hands followed by OGDC and WorldCall Telecom with 1.506 million and 1.245 million shares, respectively.