KARACHI: Stocks staged a robust rally on Wednesday with the KSE-100 index closing with gain of 332.24 points (1.02 per cent) at 32,842.59.

As investors raced to pick up stocks at lucrative values, the volume rose to 200 million shares, which was over twice the volume of 99m shares the earlier day. Traded value also scaled to Rs10.8 billion, from Rs6.3bn.

Foreign investors sold shares worth $1.92m. Among local participants, mutual funds also offloaded equity worth $1.22m.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said that the bullish activity was witnessed as investors’ were encouraged by the growth target of 5.5pc for fiscal year 2015-16 and approval of budget strategy paper that showed record allocations of Rs580bn for PSDP and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects.

Trading was dominated by the cement sector stocks, which rose by 1.6pc, with CHCC, MLCF and Fecto Cement hitting its ‘upper circuit’. DGKC, FCCL also closed higher.

Dealers at Topline Secu­rities noted that the proposal on the cut of import duty on raw material/machinery helped the textile sector as KTML closed 5pc up, while NML gained 4.9pc. Dollar appreciation against the yen sparked investor’s interest in the auto sector.

Analyst Umair Hasan at JS Global commented that after the recent downside in the banking sector, on the back of shrinking NIMs due to the latest discount rate cut, the sector witnessed recovery as investors saw this as an opportunity to buy undervalued banking scrips. ABL, HBL, MCB, NBP, and UBL all ended higher by 0.6pc, 1.5pc, 2pc, 2.2pc and 1.8pc.

“Investors focused on banks which are heavily invested in PIBs,” he said.

Oil and gas sector maintained its stability with PSO and POL up by 1pc and 0.4pc.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2015

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