KARACHI: Stocks rebound sharply on Wednesday with the KSE-100 index up by 246.12 points or 0.83 per cent, on what investors saw as thaw in the politically deteriorating conditions as one of the opposition parties called off the two-month old sit-in protests in Islamabad.
The index after crossing the 30,000-level to intra-day high at 30,025.83, settled at 29,940.39 points.
The local institutional and individuals thought it the right moment to pick-up the battered stocks at low prices.
There was however, no let up in foreign selling which amounted to a marginal $0.92 million on Wednesday, but taking the last 10 session outflow at $26.72m.
Foreign buying was noted in cements in the sum of $1m, while stocks valued at $1.2m in the banking sector and $0.5m in oil and gas sector were offloaded.
Trading volume stood at 173m shares on Wednesday, up 20pc over the earlier day while trading value also rose 30pc to Rs8.170 billion. Volume leaders except the D.G. Khan Cement, were all mid-tier stocks.
On the oil and gas sector all three refineries; ARL, NRL and PRL were plummeted to hit their ‘lower circuits’.
The addition of Rs2.18 to OGDCL and Rs6.84 to POL together with increase in price of MCB by Rs4.37 on the banking sector, contributed substantially to the index gains.
Brokerage Aba Ali Habib Securities noted that after six consecutive negative sessions, KSE-100 index recovered on third-day of the trading week primarily led by cement stocks. Cement sector witnessed highest volumes on Wednesday on expectations of better 1Q results.
CHCC and FECTC closed at their ‘upper price limit’.
Several analysts pointed out that the share in Maple Leaf Cement (MLCF) fell by 0.7pc after it announced 1QFY15 eps of Rs1.03, which stood out to be lower than analysts’ expectations.
Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2014
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