KARACHI: The stock market continued to march northwards on Friday with the KSE-100 index adding 134.60 points (0.34 per cent) to close the session at 39,926.70.

The market started off on a strong note so as to lift the index up by over 100 points in early trade.

The day’s volume increased to 362 million shares, from 298m shares, while trading value rose to Rs15 billion from Rs13bn the previous day.

The top-five traded scrips, Dewan Cement, Pace Pak, K-Electric; Sui Northern Gas and Dewan Motors contributed 113m shares or a third of the aggregate turnover.

“Among top performers Hubco rose 2.25pc, DAWH 4pc and NBP 4.64pc adding 109 points to the index while Engro down 0.80pc, PSO 1.21pc and HBL 0.37pc came under fire taking away 34 points,” said analysts at Intermarket Securities.

In the automobile sector, Indus Motors rose to touch upper circuit intra-day and closed with gain of 1.22pc as the company declared better than expected FY16 results.

Market watcher Ahsan Mehanti commented that the stocks closed bullish led by cement, autos and oil refineries on strong financial results. Recovery in global crude prices and positive impact of CPEC projects on earnings outlook for cement sector were primary factors in bullish close at the stock market.

SNGPL added 4.98pc and SSGCL 3pc, once again experienced rallies during the day’s session due to planned capital expenditures that are expected to significantly improve the companies’ overall earnings.

“With the commencement of the roll-over week, we expect the market to test the 40,000 index level during next week’s trading session”, dealers at Global Securities reckoned.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016