KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange witnessed bullish trend during the outgoing week ended Dec 04, on the back of healthy buying mainly by local investors.
BRIndex100 gained 160.32 points on week-on-week basis to close at 4,397.43 points. Average daily volumes stood at 399.422 million shares.
BRIndex30 increased by 818.51 points to close at 22,230.23 points with average daily turnover of 259.770 million shares.
KSE-100 index surged by 1,399.91 points or 3.4 percent on week-on-week basis and closed above 42,000 psychological level at 42,207.00 points. Trading activities also improved as average daily volumes on ready counter increased by 57.5 percent to 440.66 million shares as compared to previous week's average of 279.82 million shares. Average daily trading value increased by 69.1 percent to Rs 18.03 billion.
Total market capitalization increased by Rs 210 billion or 2.8 percent to Rs 7.729 trillion.
An analyst at AKD Securities said that the KSE-100 remained buoyant during the outgoing week, where tough measures for containing COVID-19 cases taken the previous week, as well as potential measures to revitalize the IMF pro-gram already forgotten by the investors.
The major exuberance was led by government of Pakistan reportedly budgeting $150 million for procurement of vaccines by the first quarter of CY21. The inflation reading at 8.35 percent was up by 0.82 ppt on month-on-month basis, where Pakistan now has a negative real interest rate of 1.35 percent. Yet, the bullish momentum in the market indicated the investors placing more value on Covid-19 vaccine availability over utility rate hikes, upsurge in global crude oil prices and consequent monetary policy tightening on the horizon.
Top performers in the outgoing week were PSMC (up 17.2 percent), TRG (up 16.9 percent), ATRL (up 16.4 percent), INIL (up 12.3 percent) and AGIL (up 12.2 percent), whereas laggards were GATI (down 15.3 percent), STJT (down 7.5 percent), JLICL (down 3.7 percent), SCBPL (down 2.5 percent) and HMM (down 1.8 percent).
An analyst at JS Global Capital said the KSE100 Index continued its rally, closing up 3.4 percent on WoW at 42,207 levels.
In a latest development regarding various solutions to curb the circular debt, the government has offered to provide Hub Power Company Limited (HUBC, up 7.6 percent) liquidity to convert existing base plant to local coal.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020