Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan shares snapped five-day losing streak and closed a highly volatile session in green on a day that saw a clear tussle between bulls and bears as benchmark KSE100 Index swung sharply on both sides in a wide range of over 1900 points. The benchmark KSE 100 index gained 560.01 to close at 45474.46 level.

Market opened gap down as wider market carried bearish momentum on domestic and geo-political concerns with major dent in early trading coming from index heavy Oils as participants tracked overnight losses in global crude. Early index decline however was underscored by low volumes that led to market quickly recovering to fill the gap within the first hour of trading. Market then witnessed another round of hammering that pulled Index down as much as 2.4% or (-1086 points), followed by a surge of over 4.4% from its intra-day low as investors primarily institutional investors cherry-picked names across major sectors, analysts at Elixir Securities commented.

Given the prevailing political situation and an overnight decline crude oil prices, the market opened on a negative note. Initially bears were in control, but lost steam as they pushed the index below 44,000 (last breach below 44,000 was in Dec’16), giving way to bulls who eventually triumphed, said analysts at Topline Securities.

Index point leaders were HUBC (+3.8%), ENGRO (+2.9%), UBL (+2.5%), DGKC (+4.6%) & SNGP (+4.8%) adding 257 points; while PSEL (-5%), TRG (-3.7%), PPL (-0.9%), DAWH (-1.4%) & PIBTL (-3.1%), withheld 75 points from the index. On the sector front, Banks contributed 160 points, Cement 101 points, Power 84 points, Fertilizer 64 points and Auto Assemblers 59 points whereas Transport shed 19 points. Market participation rose further as volumes gained 17% to 346 million shares, while traded value rose 27% to Rs16.6 billion / $159 million.

Shares of 377 companies were traded out of which 190 gained, whereas 173 declined and 14 remained unchanged. TRG Pakistan with 23 million shares traded topped the list of volume leaders followed by Bank of Punjab 20 million, K-Electric 20 million, Askari Bank 16 million, and Aisha Steel Mill 14 million. Analysts predict that the flows will continuing to guide broader market direction albeit on low volumes as participants get into holiday mood ahead of long Eid holidays.

Published in Daily Times, June 22nd, 2017.