KARACHI: The stock exchange resumed its forward journey on Friday, with the KSE-100 index rising 59.84 points to close at 39,528.82.

The index managed to promptly recover after falling 190.30 points during the first half of the session as investors rolled over their future positions.

Trading during the first half came to an abrupt halt as a technical glitch in the PSX’s network paused trading early, however lost time was recovered by extending the second session for a short period.

Despite the reduced working hours, trading volume improved to 96.3 million shares, from 91m shares yesterday while trading value decreased to Rs7.3 billion, from Rs10.5bn.

Market movers on Friday were LUCK, HUBC and JDWS, which together added 51 points while HBL, POL, OGDC, UBL and PPL took away 121 points.

Analyst Nabeel Haroon at JS Global stated that the fertiliser sector stood out, as urea despatch numbers released by the National Fertiliser Development Centre (NFDC) showed a 41pc month-over-month growth. Major gainers of the sector were FATIMA and EFERT which gained 1.54pc and 0.53pc respectively. In the cement sector LUCK rose 1.57pc after the company announced plans to expand plants in Karachi and Punjab.

According to analysts at Intermarket Securities, the retreat in crude oil prices took its toll on the E&P sector amid heavy selling in OGDC. Autos staged a mixed session with PSMC, GHNI and GHNL closing in the red while HCAR and INDU ended in the green. “Stocks closed higher fuelled by leveraged scrips in cement, fertilisers and textiles as speculation soared ahead of the monetary policy announcement on Saturday”, observed analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016