KARACHI: Encouraged by the heavy subscription to the offer of 70m shares of PPL by the Privatisation Commission, the heavyweight oil and gas sector came under spotlight at the stock market on Monday, which gave reason for the bulls to toss the KSE-100 index up by 308.77 points to 29,652.53.
Foreign fund managers made sizeable investment of $8.49 million on Monday. Among locals, mutual funds started to build portfolio ahead of the start of new fiscal year.
Volumes increased by 7 per cent to 156m shares. PPL gained 3pc and PSO rose by 2pc.
“Renewed interest in large cap stocks helped index gain on the last day of June,” asserted Samar Iqbal AVP Equity Sales at Topline Securities.
In a separate report, Topline Securities analyst Fahad Qasim noted that in the outgoing fiscal year, Pakistan stock market stood out as one of the best performing market in the world, with KSE-100 index reaping gain of 41pc or 8,647 points.
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“Fuelled by newly elected investor-friendly government, economic and energy sector reforms, both local and foreign investors participated in stocks trading,” the analyst said and added that gain of 41pc compared favourably with the last 10 years’ and 20 years’ average annual return of 21pc.
In FY14, MSCI Pakistan gained 23pc compared to 31pc gain of MSCI Frontier Markets. Moreover, amongst Asian frontier markets categorised by MSCI, Pakistan ranked first, ahead of Bangladesh, which gained 21pc and Vietnam (13pc).
Lucky hit its upper circuit, leading the cement sector as consolidation in the sector following the sale of Lafarge Pakistan Cement, would likely re-rate sector valuation upwards.
The IMF board approved disbursement of $556m as the third installment under its Extended Fund Facility.
Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2014
