The bourse witnessed yet another range-bound session after starting the week on a positive note. Concerns related to Osama’s death have subsided and revived investor confidence as the benchmark KSE-100 index closed 53 points up at 11,933. Volumes improved and were recorded at 79 million shares. Majority of the volumes were witnessed in the second tier stocks with LOTPTA ending the day as volume leader with 8.2 million shares. JSCL and ANL followed as rumors regarding sale of AGTL hovered the market.
ENGRO closed 2.3 percent higher after ECC’s decision to allocate 40 MMCFD of gas to fertiliser companies from SNGPL network. Investor participation was confined to specific scrips as bellwether banking sector stocks including MCB, HBL, UBL and NBP outshined the index. Advancements in Engro, PSO and FFC supplemented the gains at the local bourse.
The KSE-100 index closed at 11,932.68 with a gain of 52.72 points and total volume stood at 60,467,186 along with the total value of 2,712,087,177. The relatively calm political environment, normalcy returning in ties with US and proposal by FBR of either maintaining the status quo or a decline in tax rate for corporate sector certainly invited renewed buying interest by both corporate and retail participants in dividend yielding main board stocks. Despite various threats attached with them, support by resident participants and local financial groups trading from both local and off-shore accounts kept the gains intact during most of the session until sell-off mainly in the expensive stocks checked gains.
Speculative and volumetric activity in ANL and JSCL, providing various trading opportunities to investors made substantial contribution to overall turnover.
The absence of support due to issues linked to economic and financial matters did restrict an overall bull run, mainly due to bleak economic and financial outlooks ahead of the federal budget that is around the corner. Even the recently released export figures depicting a substantial increase due to appreciating international cotton prices in given period failed to inspire renewed buying mainly due to various hurdles stymieing the manufacturing sector including power cuts along with the threat of inventory loss due by dint of declining cotton prices worldwide.
Success in government’s plan to raise funds for addressing lingering circular debt by issuing OGDC convertible bonds and the lenient view taken by the government on CGT implementation mechanism, preferable by changing the implementation mode, may offer triggers for the local bourse in coming session said Hasnain Asghar Ali at Aziz Fidahusein adding that stagnation continues to pose threat to expensive stocks and dips in heavy dividend yielders away from various threats may however yield healthy returns for equity specific funds.
