KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange Thursday witnessed a bullish session, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining 609 points to close at 43,528.
The benchmark showed some negative activity during the first few minutes of trading before adopting a positive momentum for the rest of the session. It hit a day’s low of 42,384 points a few minutes after trading commenced, whereas it hit a day’s high of 43,628 points near the end of the session.
Volumes edged up as 190 million shares worth Rs9 billion changed hands as compared to 188m shares worth Rs8.5b during the last session. Of the 346 traded scrips, 208 advanced, 123 declined and 15 remained unchanged.
Overall, the engineering sector dominated trading with 27.0m shares traded, while the cement and chemicals sectors followed with 26.6m and 18.4m shares changing hands.
Yesterday, the benchmark 100-share index closed at 42,920 points, showing a decline of 375 points.
Top 10 index point decliners included UBL (down 4%), HBL (1.8%), ENGRO (2.7%), OGDC (1.9%), MCB (1.8%), LUCK (1.5%), PSO (2.2%), MLCF (4.5%), PPL (0.8%) & HUBC (down 1%), withholding 353 points from the index.
Volumes increased further from 167m shares Tuesday to 188m shares (up 11% DoD). Average daily traded value also increased from $70.2m to $76.7m (up 9% DoD).
Sector-wise data showed commercial banks withheld 182 points from the index, oil & gas exploration (E&P) sector withheld 59 points whereas cement sector eroded 49 points from the index.