A bullish trend continued on Pakistan Stock Exchange on the third consecutive day Wednesday on the back of healthy buying in various sectors, mainly by local investors. BRIndex100 gained 75.08 points or 2.09 percent to close at 3,670.31 points. BRIndex-100 touched an intraday high of 3,678.50 and intraday low of 3,596.87 points. Volumes stood at 123.201 million shares. BRIndex30 increased by 444.8 points or 2.43 percent to close at 18,772.83 points with a turnover of 89.250 million shares.
The KSE-100 Index surged by 589.44 points or 1.72 percent to close at 34,896.55 points. Trading activity further improved as daily volumes on the ready counter increased to 130.429 million shares as compared to 91.162 million shares traded Tuesday.
Foreign investors remained net sellers of shares worth $0.9 million. The market capitalization increased by Rs 95 billion to Rs 7.015 trillion. Out of total 333 active scrips, 239 closed in positive, only 81 in negative while the value of 13 stocks remained unchanged.
Lotte Chemical was the volume leader with 11.690 million shares. It gained Re 0.91 to close at Rs 17.18 followed by TRG Pak that inched up by Re 0.67 to close at Rs 17.87 with 7.962 million shares. Indus Motor Co and Al-Ghazi Tractors were the top gainers with Rs 17.67 and Rs 14.50, respectively to close at Rs 1,208.47 and Rs 330.50. Bata Pak and Mehmood Textile were the top losers with Rs 39.35 and Rs 10.97, respectively to close at Rs 1,400.00 and Rs 391.47.
BR Automobile Assembler Index surged by 78.28 points or 1.35 percent to close at 5,876.60 points with total turnover of 1.359 million shares. BR Cement Index increased by 106.11 points or 3.48 percent to close at 3,153.65 points with 19.129 million shares.
BR Commercial Banks Index closed at 8,194.13 points, up 117.28 points or 1.45 percent with 9.496 million shares. BR Power Generation and Distribution Index gained 21.3 points or 0.43 percent to close at 5,021.25 points with 5.584 million shares. BR Oil and Gas Index inched up by 76.61 points or 1.91 percent to close at 4,079.76 points with 13.815 million shares.
BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 806.49 points, up 6.49 points or 0.81 percent with 11.869 million shares. An analyst at Arif Habib Corporation said that the KSE-100 index increased again by 631 points during the session that was contributed mainly by fertilizer and banking sectors and was further supplemented by Cement sector.
Positive expectation of IMF deal conclusion kept the sentiment elevated and helped the investors take bets on O&GMCs, Cement, Banks and Fertilizer. Cement sector dominated the volumes for better part of the day, however, Chemicals took over the ranking in the closing hour, where LOTCHEM generated most volume (11.6 million) followed by TRG (8 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (up 140 points), Banks (up 135 points), E&P (up 81 points), Cement (up 75 points) and O&GMCs (up 48 points).
Stocks that contributed positively include FFC (up 69 points), PPL (up 48 points), HBL (up 45 points), OGDC (up 41 points) and MCB (up 37 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include POL (down 7 points), HMB (down 4 points), ICI (down 3 points), SYS (down 3 points) and KEL (down 2 points).