RECORDER REPORT
KARACHI: Karachi stocks ended positive Monday primarily due to what equity analysts said pre-results rally in banking, fertilizer and cement scrips.
Also, the Consumer Price Index inflation, which slid to 12-year low to 1.8 percent, Year-on-Year, during the just-concluded July, made some highly leveraged cement and fertiliser scrips attractive for investors.
The KSE-100 index gained 83 points to close at 35,824.56 compared to 35,741.52 Friday last week. The benchmark index showed volatility by what JS analyst Ahmed Saeed Khan said continuously juggling between the red and the green zones.
The trading turnover remained low and decreased to 200 million shares from previous 299 million. The value of stocks traded depleted from Rs 10.77 billion to Rs 9.59 billion. Of the total 362 scrips traded, 179 posted gain, 168 losses while 15 remained unchanged.
The market capitalisation, however, inched up to Rs 7.721 trillion compared to Rs 7.701 trillion of last session. Foreign investors started the week on a positive note making net buying of $ 579,553. TRG Pakistan led the day’s volume with 14.87 million trades. The scrip depreciated from Rs 40.50 at the opening to Rs 38.80 at close.
Other best performers included Silk Bank 14.8 million, Pace Pakistan 11 million, K-Electric 8.9 million, Ghani Automobile 7.6 million, Byco Petroleum 6.2 million, Faysal Bank 6.0 million, Pak Elektron 6.0 million, NIB Bank 5.5 million and Jahangir Siddiqui Company 5.2 million shares.
As the roll-over week ended, trading in futures nosedived to 17 million contracts from 83.5 million of previous day.
Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corp attributed the day’s bull-run to select banking, fertilizer and cement stocks that, he said, rallied on the back of speculations ahead of corporate announcements due this week.
Falling global commodities weakened investor interest in oil stocks, he said. “Hopes for amicable settlement of withholding tax issue for non-filers and release of the IMF tranche under the Extended Fund Facility later next month played a catalytic role in positive close amid thin activity at KSE,” the analyst viewed.
Samar Iqbal, vice president at Topline Securities, saw stability on the market after lower-than-expected CPI inflation rate.
Favourable CPI numbers, Khan said, pushed highly leveraged sectors such as FATIMA, EFERT and FFBL up by 2.4, 1.54 and 1.37 percent.
Auto assemblers also rallied in anticipation of improved car sales in July with HCAR, PSMC and INDU marking 5, 3 and 0.5 percent gains, respectively.
Moving forward, the market is expected to remain volatile
