KARACHI: Bulls charged relentlessly for the fifth day in a row on Wednesday with the KSE-100 index up by 249.63 points to close at 32,000.01.

Despite the closure of market on Thursday, investors were not willing to square their positions for they looked forward to a further upswing in share values post the Christmas holidays in the foreign markets.

Volume rose to 263 million shares on Wednesday, from 244m shares the earlier day, though the trading value decreased to Rs10.9 billion, from Rs11.5bn, indicating dominance of the second and third tier scrips.

Banking sector remained in the spotlight with trading in 58m shares followed by electricity sector 49m shares.

Foreign investors made net investment in equities valued at $0.26m. Foreigners reshuffled portfolio, selling $2.5m worth shares from the chemicals sector and adding $1.2m to the banking sector.

Investment analyst Sarfaraz Abbasi at National Investment Trust stated that the strength of the market owed itself to ‘multiple impacting variables’.

Those included improvement in macroeconomic indicators as the foreign exchange reserve increases following receipt of $1.05bn from the International Monetary Fund; the expansionary monetary policy of the SBP and the foreign investors’ portfolio inflows.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp stated that trade remained high on positive sentiments after the prime minister convened all parties conference to deal with terrorism, and renewed foreign interest.

Samar Iqbal, AVP equity sales at Topline Securities said that banking stocks rallied on Wednesday due to institutional buying. UBL rose 2.9pc and MCB gained 3.4pc.

Renewed interest was seen in FFBL in anticipation of better payout with Oct-Dec quarterly results.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2014