KARACHI: Pakistan equities bounced back on Friday, with the benchmark KSE-100 index gaining 844 points to cross the 41,000 points barrier. The index opened on a high and continued an upward trajectory, hitting a high of 41,344 points to close at 41,312 points. The market struggled for a direction in the first fifteen minutes but then cement sector provided the much-needed push as it rallied at full throttle with investors rejoicing at the news of upcoming meetings between cement sector’s players for the resolution of pricing issues. Consequently, all stocks in the cement sector closed higher. DG Khan Cement (DGKC) hit the upper price limit while Maple Leaf Cement Factory (MLCF) traded second-best volumes of over 9 million shares on volumes chart. Other sectors including oils and finance followed suit and edged up on institutional cherry-picking, albeit witnessing relatively lower activity as evident from the flattish volumes going through benchmark indices. The week saw KSE-100 index decline by 2.6% or 1,097 points, amid rising political tensions between civil and military establishment, said analysts at Topline Securities. Participation skewed towards index heavy blue chips, where average volumes were marginally down by 4 percent while traded value surged 20 percent to $71 million. Had it not been for Friday’s cement led rally, where the index recovered 2.1 percent of 844 points, weekly performance would have been much worse, analysts commented. The top 10 worst performers as per KSE-100 index points were: HBL (-4%), LUCK (-7%), SNGP (-11%), ENGRO (-3%), SEARLE (-9%), DAWH (-4%), MEBL (-6%), OGDC (-2%), MLCF (-8%), and ATRL (-11%); with a cumulative negative contribution of 564 points, whereas, only 18 of the KSE-100 index scripts managed to post gains, accumulating just 111 points. Refinery shed 7% week-on-week led as ATRL, NRL (-6%), PRL (-6%) & BYCO (-5%) declined; engineering was down 6% as participants readily choose the high growth, outperforming sector to book gains. Cements were down 5% week-on-week which could have been worse considering the sector recovered 4% on Friday alone, said analysts. OMC & Pharma shed 5% each; banks shed 2% and E&P by slipped 1%. During the week, banks bought $14.4 million, while insurance companies sold $15.4 million worth of Pak equities. Foreigners sold $9.8 million and bought $0.5m worth of Pak equities. Selling was centered in the cement sector ($5.5m), E&P ($3.6m), banks ($3.4 million) and power ($1.3 million); while there was little buying in fertilizer ($1.5m) and technology ($0.8 m), reported Topline Securities. TRG Pak toppled the volume leaders’ ladder with 10.2 million shares traded, followed by Maple Leaf with 9.1 million shares, K-Electric with 8.5m shares, Engro Polymer with 8 million shares, and Power Cement with 5.5 million shares Shares of 386 companies were traded on Friday out of which 288 advanced, 78 ended in red, and 20 remained unchanged, during the course of trading. Published in Daily Times, October 7th 2017.