Despite European quarterly growth data, the KSE-100 index ended up in positive territory for a second day as the index added 36 points to yesterday’s total and breached the 11,200 mark. Market closed in the green, up 36 points at 11,270 levels. Institutional buying was witnessed today ahead of the result season. Furthermore, yesterday’s approval by the ECC for increase of margins by 30 to 32 per cent for Oil Marketing Companies’ also played an important part.
KSE 30 index closed at 10,770.21 levels with the gain of 20.35 points, while All Share index scored 23.37 points to close at 7,831.38 levels. Total 108 scrips advanced 115 declined and 94 remain unchanged out of total 317 scrips traded.
As the Fauji twins succumbed to profit taking for the day, fertiliser counterpart Fatima, whose board meeting was announced today, decided to take the driver’s seat and gained 6.5 per cent on its closing price from yesterday and perched itself on top of the market volume leader board with 7.7 million shares traded. The ECC’s decision to enhance OMC and dealer margins continued to spend positive waves across the oil sector as Pakistan State Oil, Attock Refinery Limited, Pakistan Oilfields Limited and BYCO basked in the investor’s affection. The market resilience to today’s disappointing news from Europe is commendable but to foster an impression of reliability would indeed be a fallacy; hence caution remains the operative term when approaching the local investment arena, said Ali Hussain, Sr. Investment Analyst at HMFS.
