PSX makes fresh history with 2.220bn volume

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday witnessed another historic day when daily trading volume crossed two billion mark to highest-ever level of 2.220 billion shares for the first time in its history.

The stock market remained bullish most of the day however profit-taking at the fag end eroded intra-day gains.

BRIndex100 closed at 5,086.05 points, up 1.89 points or 0.04 percent. BRIndex100 hit intraday high of 5,137.84 points and intraday low of 5,076.62 points. Volumes stood at 2.080 billion shares.

BRIndex30 gained 88.1 points or 0.33 percent to close at 26,579.64 points with total daily turnover of 1.707 billion shares.

The KSE-100 Index closed at 46,790.75 points, down 21.56 points or 0.05 percent. Trading activity remained extremely high as daily volumes on the ready counter crossed 2 billion mark to highest-ever level of 2.220 billion shares for the first time in its history as compared to 1.563 billion shares traded on Wednesday. Daily traded value increased to Rs 42.838 billion as compared to previous day’s Rs 28.338 billion.

The market capitalization declined by Rs 31 billion to Rs 8.066 trillion. Out of total 432 active scrips, 241 closed in negative and 173 in positive while the value of 18 stocks remained unchanged.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 950.273 million shares and closed at Rs 3.24, up Rs 0.02 followed by Hum Network that gained Rs 0.38 to close at Rs 8.19 with 172.575 million shares. Colgate Palmolive and Gatron Industries were the top gainers increasing by Rs 36.99 and Rs 33.52 respectively to close at Rs 2850.00 and Rs 480.56 while Unilever Foods and Pak Tobacco were the top losers declining by Rs 983.00 and Rs 71.86 respectively to close at Rs 15616.00 and Rs 1263.14.

BR Automobile Assembler Index declined by 112.52 points or 1.21 percent to close at 9,192.01 points with total turnover of 6.242 million shares.

BR Cement Index gained 17.68 points or 0.24 percent to close at 7,488.06 points with 51.731 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index inched up by 18.58 points or 0.2 percent to close at 9,255.85 points with 175.890 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index lost 12.12 points or 0.22 percent to close at 5,519.52 points with 91.100 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index decreased by 13.11 points or 0.33 percent to close at 3,961.83 points with 86.199 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 4,315.47 points, up 65.58 points or 1.54 percent with 1,327.524 million shares.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that the MSCI rebalancing created excitement in the market with heavy flows in OGDC, LUCK and TRG which were the key subjects in the changes announced earlier during the month.

Besides, WTL repeated the performance shown on Wednesday being the volume leader consecutively and helping the market realize total trading volumes of 2217 million shares, which is the highest ever after posting 1560 million shares a day earlier.

Since MSCI orders were mostly MoC, last half an hour caused the index to trade red with a decline of 137 points, however the Index closed down 22 points.

Banking sector kept the index green for most part of the session, with particular interest in HBL and UBL.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Technology (up 46 points), Inv Banks (up 23 points), Fertilizer (down 29 points), Tobacco (down 21 points), Autos (down 19 points), E&P (down 14 points) and Engineering (down 13 points).

Stocks that contributed positively to the index include TRG (up 46 points), LUCK (up 30 points), HBL (up 23 points), DAWH (up 17 points) and KTML (up 8 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include PAKT (down 21 points), FFC (down 18 points), MTL (down 16 points), MCB (down 14 points) and BAFL (down 12 points).