Buying spree by foreigners helps KSE mark 18,000 points

The Karachi stocks market continues to clinch new records as Friday saw the benchmark 100-share index breaking the physiological barrier of 18,000 points.
The index, on last trading day of the week, closed at the all time high of 18,074 points against Thursday’s 17,921.02 points, gaining 153.25 points.
The intraday high and low were, respectively, recorded at 18,087.54 and 17,896.66 points. Of the total 365 scrips traded, the share price of 208 increased, 141 decreased and 16 remained unchanged.
The free-float KSE-30 index closed at 14,814.06 points, up by 144.81 points or 0.99 percent compared to Thursday’s 14,669.25 points.
The market observers cite increased buying by the foreign fund managers coupled with a strong corporate earning announcements as major contributable factors for Friday’s historic increase in the stocks index.
“(The) Index crossed the physiological level of 18,000 due to continuing buying by foreign fund managers in the last few days,” viewed Mohammad Sohail, a senior equity analyst and chief executive officer of Topline Securities.
Ahsan Mehanti, another market observer and director at Arif Habib Research, said the record boom was led by selected blue-chip stocks across the board on strong earnings outlook.
At the ready-counter, the trading volume was recorded higher by 19.5 million shares at 369.041 million shares compared to 349.532 shares traded on the previous day.
Sohail termed the volume as “healthy’ saying the 370 million shares traded were mostly focused towards the telecommunication shares.
Mehanti also came up with same saying the telecoms sector was leading the stocks rally on back of the Supreme Court’s ruling against the order of the High Court regarding the International Clearing House deal raising higher earnings outlook on LDI revenues.
The telecommunication firms like WorldCall Telecom, Telecadr Limited and PTCL were top of the 10 well-performing scrips on the day. The three companies counted their traded shares, respectively, at 45.79, 31.63 and 29.81 million, registering a per share gain of 14 paisas, Re 1 and Rs 1.14.
Other listed companies followed were TRG Pakistan, Maple Leaf Cement, Wateen Telecom, Fauji Cement, Jahangir Siddiqui Company, Nishat Mills and Engro Corporation.
“The MCB, Engro and PTCL closed at their upper limit due to positive news flows while some correction was witnessed in oil stocks due to falling international oil prices,” said Sohail.
The stocks value also was encouraging and rose to Rs 9.407 billion from the previous day’s Rs 8.604 billion. The market capital also set in the green zone and swelled by Rs 27 billion to Rs 4.491 trillion compared to Rs 4.464 trillion of the last trading session.
The future market also remained robust where the futures traded skyrocketed to 41.862 million shares against 24.116 million of Thursday.
“Strong textile sector exports data, record earning announcements, the current account surplus for July-January 2013, expected hike in the KESC’s power tariff easing circular debt concerns in energy sector and hopes for the OGDC’s gas sales agreement with fertilizer companies affected the sentiments,” Mehanti summed up.
According to market analysts, despite all the odds on politico-economic front the index would keep its northward journey continued and would cross the 19,500 points by the end of the current fiscal year.