KARACHI: The bulls staged a comeback at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday — the last session of the trading week — as players cherry-picked stocks that lost valuation during the last bearish spell.
The benchmark KSE-100 index traded between hope and despair, which eventually let loose the bulls, who pulled the bourse into the green.
Investors kept a close watch on political news as Punjab became the centre of attention ahead of the chief minister’s election.
The KSE-100 index gained since the morning bell rang, but some dips were seen at regular intervals. The uptrend turned steeper at midday as the index once again breached the 42,000-point mark.
At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 40,077.30 points with an increase of 245.55 points or 0.62%.
A report from Arif Habib Limited noted that the market witnessed a bearish momentum during the first session due to inflationary and political concerns.
However, the brokerage house stated that the bulls made a comeback in the second session for value hunting across the board as the benchmark KSE-100 closed in the green zone.
Mainboard volumes continued to remain dull although decent volumes were observed in the third-tier stocks.
Sectors contributing to the performance include fertiliser (+83.2 points), technology (+70.5 points), chemical (+30.2 points), exploration and production (+27.6 points), and cement (+26.9 points).
Shares of 317 companies were traded during the session. At the close of trading, 226 scrips closed in the green, 72 in the red, and 19 remained unchanged.
Overall trading volumes rose to 171.27 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 157.99 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs4.73 billion.
WorldCall Limited Telecom was the volume leader with 19.98 million shares traded, losing Rs0.01 to close at Rs1.20. It was followed by Unity Foods with 18.96 million shares traded, gaining Rs1.05 to close at Rs17.77 and TPL Properties with 16.81 million shares traded, gaining Rs0.62 to close at Rs16.87.
