KARACHI: Stocks crawled up on Thursday as investors grew cautious after consecutive days of bullish trading activity.

The KSE-100 Index opened on a positive note and rallied to mark an intraday high of 281 points, but selling pressures in the latter half of the trading session saw the index take a plunge to close with a minor addition of 34.01 points (0.09 per cent) at 39,468.98

Volumes slipped 19pc to 181 million shares while trading value decreased by 20pc to Rs10.5bn. Foreign investors sold stocks worth $1.40m on Thursday. However, during the month foreigners were net buyers of stocks valued at $22.53m.

From a contribution to index perspective, FML, HBL, LUCK, MCB, NBP and NML added 135 points while PPL, POL, DAWH, OGDC and PSO took away 192 points.

“Brisk activity was seen in banks continuing the previous day’s trend. Interest in the sector was seen in major stocks like HBL, NBP and MCB which rose up to 2.2pc”, said dealers at Topline Securities.

Analyst Nabeel Haroon at JS Global noted that PSMC closed on its lower circuit as the automobile assembler posted disappointing earnings per share (EPS) numbers of Rs.17.44/share for the first half of the current calendar year, which was 41pc lower year-on-year. Robust selling was seen in the fertiliser sector as investors preferred to wait until fertiliser despatch numbers for July were released. Major losers in the sector included EFERT and FATIMA which fell 0.73pc and 0.74pc respectively.

Investors continued to liquidate positions in the E&P sector where OGDC was down 1.07pc, PPL lower by 1.79pc and POL fell 3.25pc as global crude oil prices (WTI) declined to trade below $42 a barrel level.

According to analysts at Intermarket Securities, investors’ interest remained focused on banks and select cements. “Textile plays staged a comeback with NML, NCL and GATM closing up 2.22pc, 3.49pc and 5pc respectively”.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2016