KARACHI: The local bourse witnessed a range-bound session with choppy moves and dull trading on Monday. The benchmark KSE-100 closed at 42,439.04 points, recording a gain of 114 points (0.27 per cent).
Although the market opened positive and continued to trade in the green zone for the entire session, investors remained cautious over the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of a Supreme Court hearing on the Panama Papers leaks case and the skirmishes with India along the Line of Control.
Investors were also spooked by foreign selling in emerging markets. In just eight sessions since Nov 9, foreign selling at the Pakistan Stock Exchange stood at a massive $63.85m.
Overall, the volume of traded shares plummeted 29pc to 347 million shares, while the value dropped 22.7pc to Rs9.5bn. Summit Bank led the volume leaders’ list with trading in 62m shares, accounting for 11pc of the day’s entire volume.
Shares of exploration and production were strong on Monday as the sector finished 1.1pc higher from its previous close. Sharp recovery in international oil prices and the hope of a production cap by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in a meeting scheduled for the end of the month gave boost to investor sentiment.
Pakistan Oilfields rose 1.13pc and the Oil and gas Development Companies 0.99pc to become the major gainers of the sector. Pakistan Petroleum was up 0.66pc and Mari Petroleum 2.46pc.
“In the cement sector, Bestway Cement rallied 4.59pc on the back of its quarterly results’ announcement, providing shareholders with a cash dividend and depicting higher earnings per share,” analysts at JS Global said.
Positive sentiments were noted also in the oil-marketing companies, which led Hascol Petroleum to close at its upper price limit of 5pc while PSO posted a gain of 1.1pc.
Published in Dawn November 22nd, 2016
