A bullish trend continued on Pakistan Stock Exchange on the back of healthy buying by local and foreign investors. The benchmark KSE-100 index, for the first time in its history, crossed 51,000 psychological level. The index closed at highest-ever level of 51,073.14 points with a net increase of 137.23 points Tuesday.
The market opened on a positive note and the index hit 51,487.58 points intra-day high. However, the index could not sustain this level due to profit-taking in select stocks during late hours. Foreign investors remained net buyers of shares on the second consecutive day with fresh net buying of $1.2 million.
Trading activity also improved as daily trading volumes increased to 370.231 million shares as compared to 326.125 million shares traded Monday. The market capitalization increased by Rs 25 billion to Rs 10.069 trillion. Out of total 404 active scrips, 213 closed in negative, 177 in positive while the value of 14 stocks remained unchanged.
TRG Pak was the volume leader of the day with 36.030 million shares. It gained Rs 1.63 to close at Rs 57.92 followed by K-Electric that lost Rs 0.11 to close at Rs 7.81 with 21.483 million shares. Engro Polymer closed at Rs 30.51, down Rs 0.44 with 16.347 million shares. Nestle Pakistan and Sapphire Textile were the top gainers with Rs 249.00 and Rs 97.50, respectively to close at Rs 9,449.00 and Rs 2,047.50. Unilever Foods and Sanofi-Aventis were the top losers with Rs 299.97 and Rs 85.86, respectively to close at Rs 6,300.03 and Rs 2,153.13.
Arhum Ghous at JS Global Capital said the market continued its bullish momentum as KSE-100 index gained to make an intraday high of 553 points, however closed 137 points up at 51,073 levels after some profit-taking was witnessed later in the day. HUBC (up 2.38 percent), LUCK (up 2.00 percent) and MCB (up 2.28 percent) were the major gainers, whereas major laggards were UBL (down 1.75 percent), OGDC (down 0.69 percent) and FFC (down 1.42 percent). Mixed sentiments were viewed in the cement sector as growth of 0.7 percent was witnessed in the dispatch numbers released by APCMA for the month of April-2017. Local sales climbed up by 9.5 percent but exports declined by 50.80 percent during the month. DCL (up 4.96 percent) and LUCK (up 2.00 percent) were among the major gainers, whereas on the flip slide MLCF (down 1.09 percent) and DGKC (down 0.55 percent) were among the major losers of the aforementioned sector.
An analyst at Topline Securities said that after surging 5 percent over past three sessions, profit-taking restricted upside gain to 137 points pushing the KSE-100 above 51,000 level. Few MSCI names were shuffled from the leader board as LUCK (up 2 percent), HUBC (up 2.4 percent), MCB (up 2.3 percent), BAHL (up 3.9 percent) and SNGP (up 3.5 percent) added 201 points, while UBL (down 1.8 percent), EFERT (down 3.4 percent), FFC (down 1.4 percent), OGDC (down 0.7 percent) and PAEL (down 2.3 percent) withheld 28 points from the index.