Bullish sentiments dominated on the Lahore Stock Exchange on Tuesday and the equities kept on rising amid ascending trading turnover on account of investors and institutional interest in selective shares. The LSE-25 index moved up to 2974.20 against 2911.70 depicting an improvement of 62.50 points while transaction volume significantly increased to 28.429 million shares as compared to 19.759 million shares traded a day earlier.
Mari Gas, OGDC, Pakistan Oil Fields from the oil and energy sector, MCB Bank, Habib Bank, Allied Bank, Bank Alfalah and Bank of Punjab made visible gains while Fauji Fertiliser, Lucky Cement and D.G. Khan Cement also supported the market sentiments. On the contrary, PSO, Adamjee Insurance, Nishat Mills, Pace Pakistan and Arif Habib Securities remained under pressure and closed with losses.
The market opened on a healthy note and kept on sliding up almost throughout the day. The market witnessed selling pressure in selective shares, but buying support helped market recovery during the day's trading. The analysts were of the view that market rise was because of the shares' values, which have moved down to attractive levels. As a result, the investors took fresh positions and picked shares of their choice in anticipation of reasonable margin.
According to them, the market is likely to present bullish moves in coming days while investors could go for profit-taking to secure their positions, which could upset the market sentiments. They were of the view that the investors should restrict to only dividend oriented and fundamentally strong shares to avert any loss.
The advancing stocks were ahead of declining ones, as out of a total of 121 active issues, 42 companies registered gains, 31 went down, while values of 48 companies stayed glued to their previous levels. Mari Gas gained Rs 14.08, Pak Suzuki Motors was improved by Rs 4.38, OGDC was appreciated by Rs 4.15 while Pak Oil Fields and MCB Bank were up by Rs 3.31 and Rs 3.30 respectively.
Among losers, ICI Pakistan lost Rs 5.50, PSO was declined by Rs 2.30, while Engro Chemical and Adamjee Insurance were down by Rs 1.49 and Rs 1.22 respectively. Bank Alfalah was the market leader whose 6.032 million shares changed hands followed by Pace Pakistan with 4.488 million shares.