KARACHI: Led by banking and cement stocks, the KSE-100 index surged 287 points (0.7per cent) to close at its new all-time high of 39,434 points on Wednesday.

Volumes rose 14pc to 224.3 million shares while traded value increased 16pc to Rs13.3 billion. Foreign investors bought stocks worth $2.37m on Wednesday. Among local participants, mutual funds continued to build fresh positions while individuals lost appetite and booked profits.

 Among sectors, finance stood out as the best performing while healthcare took its toll on the market in general. From a contribution to index perspective, HBL, LUCK, FML, UBL, BAHL and MCB added 220 points while SEARL took away 11 points.

According to dealers at Topline Securities, major gains of 164 points were contributed by heavy weight stocks, UBL, Lucky Cement and HBL, which saw their prices, climb by 1.9pc to 3.3pc. “Fauji Fertilizer (FFC) was up 0.5pc after announcing Q2 2016 results, which was above market expectations.”   Other analysts noted profit taking in the pharmaceutical sector, where major losers were SEARL down 2.08pc and GLAXO down 1.97pc.

In a surprise move energy stocks rallied on Wednesday, completely disregarding the decline in crude oil prices or the sentiment at large within the E&P sphere as crude oil traded 0.61pc at almost the same level where it closed yesterday, stated analysts at Intermarket Securities. “Cements came back with a bang, with LUCK, DGKC and MLCF closing up 2.7pc, 1pc and 1pc respectively. Autos took a sigh of relief after news of Shinzo Abe’s stimulus package led to renewed depreciation in the yen.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp commented that stocks closed at an all time high led by blue chip banks, cement and oil scrips on strong valuations ahead of major earning announcements this week.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2016