KARACHI, May 22: The bulls kept up the charge on Wednesday tossing the KSE-100 index up by another 290.90 points. Like several previous days, the index did not fall below the earlier day’s close, though it touched day’s high at 21,483.87 points, before close of trading at 21,458.90 points.

The momentum appeared to have gathered from the earlier day’s exceptionally high foreign purchases of shares worth $26.05 million. The interest again centered on the ‘oil and gas’ sector on Wednesday, where PSO hit another ‘upper lock’ with gain of Rs13.46.

The oil marketing company has climbed by 40 per cent in less than 20 sessions of the current month as the market is betting on the new government to be able to tide over the circular debt issue that has plagued PSO and the Independent Power Producers.

The visit of Chinese prime minister was also believed to have boosted investor sentiments.

Although incontrovertibly at a very high altitude, the KSE-100 index continues to climb each day to a new all-time high. Many analysts accept that on valuations, there is very small margin for further rise based on fundamentals in some of the heavy-weights investors nonetheless are swimming with the tide.

On Wednesday, the foreign investment was of the order of $3.78 million. This leaves a question mark for the direction of the market going forward. But the optimists are also equal in number.

Ovais Ahsan, analyst at JS Global, said they expected the market to remain in the firm grip of the bulls as some of the larger local funds had sold off ahead of elections but were nervous now due to persistent foreign inflows which could induce them to panic buying.

The turnover in terms of shares rose by 29 per cent to 572 million shares, over 444m shares traded the day earlier. However, trading value declined by 7 per cent to Rs15.319 billion, from Rs16.522bn.

Dealers at brokerage Sherman Securities pointed out that if the future volume of 27 million shares was included total volume of broad market would mount to 600m shares, with such phenomenal activity witnessed after a gap of almost six years.

Among the local participants, banks purchased $1.61 million worth stocks. On the other hand, companies; mutual funds; individuals and other organisations, chose to book profit, through net sales, respectively of $0.54m; $1.82m; $0.55m and $2.49m worth stocks.

Arif Habib Equity sales stated that the energy sector had remained in focus on Wednesday due to the expectations that their bottom-line will improve due to priority of circular debt on the next government’s agenda.

The exuberance was further reinforced by the clarification by Ishaq Dar, expected to be the finance minister in next government, that they are not interested in restoring wealth tax. Although there are indications that the next government might increased the sales tax by 1 per cent.

On the top-10 active list, Lotte Chemical gained 85 paisa to Rs8.63 on 63m shares. The stock contributed 11 per cent to the market turnover. Fauji Cement was up 30 paisa to Rs12.06 on 52 million shares, Dewan Cement rose by 84 paisa to Rs7.12 on 34m shares; KESC stronger by 57 paisa to Rs6.92 on 33m shares and PTCL was up 38 paisa to Rs21.05 on 30m shares.

Lafarge Pakistan added 34 paisa to Rs8.32 on 27m shares, TRG Pakistan up by 61 paisa to Rs10.36 on 18m shares, PIA higher by 91 paisa to Rs7.39 on 16m shares, Jah Sidd Co up by 33 paisa to Rs12.44 on 14m shares and Maple Leaf Cement gained 39 paisa to Rs21.87 on 19m shares.