Daily Times

Karachi: Pakistan equities ended green on weekend with the benchmark KSE 100 index gaining 422 points to close at 38646 level.

The KSE-100 index remained positive during trading session as the index traded between an intraday high of 701 points and an intraday low of 31 points to close.

“Stocks turned bullish in late session rally in scrips across the board after SC verdict on petition rejection in NAB references and disqualification. IMF statements on Pakistan high growth path following Pak-IMF talks, higher global crude oil prices, upbeat data for car sales in Nov’17 and reports on surging fertilizer and cement sales in Dec. 2017 played a catalyst role in bullish close”, Ahsan Mehanti, senior analyst, commented.

Volumes stood at 140 million shares for the day, reporting an increase of 50%. Major movers at the bourse were ENGRO (+3.98%), HBL (+2.30%), SNGP (+3.94%) and PPL (+1.18%) contributing 160 points to the index.

Investors’ interest was seen in the engineering sector as MUGHAL (+4.54%) and ASTL (+3.07%) closed in green zone on the back of news reports suggesting increase in price of steel bars.

In the textile sector, NML (+2.05%) announced the ground breaking of Hyundai Nishat Motors and commencement of production of new spinning plant this month.

SSGC (+1.11%) and SNGP (+3.94%) from gas distribution and PSO (+1.87%) from the OMCs closed in green. POL (+0.59%) and OGDC (+0.25%) in the E&P sector retrieved to close in the green.

TRG Pak topped the volume leaders list with 17.9 million m shares traded followed by Pak Elektron 11.3 million, Engro Corp XD 7.2 million, K-Electric 7.2 million and JS Bank 4.16 million.

Published in Daily Times, December 16^th 2017.