KARACHI: Stocks continued to climb for the second day on Friday. The benchmark KSE-100 index made an intraday gain of 815 points as investors continued to take positions in heavyweight stocks eligible to be included in the MSCI’s emerging-market index.

However, some nervousness crept in towards the end as it was the last trading session of the week, which prompted prudent investors to take profit ahead of the weekend. The index nonetheless closed 567 points, or 1.5 per cent, higher at 49,851.

Volumes further improved to 308 million shares on Friday against 288m shares traded the previous session. Engro Polymer and Chemicals Ltd was the volume leader for the second consecutive day. Market’s traded value rose to Rs17.8 billion from Rs15.4bn a day ago.

Major index movers were United Bank Ltd (UBL) which rose 4.61pc, Lucky Cement 3.87pc, Habib Bank Ltd (HBL) 2.18pc, MCB Bank 4.05pc and Engro Corporation 2.57pc; they cumulatively contributed 408 points to the index, analysts at JS Global said. On the flip side, Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (PPL) dropped 1.99pc, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd 2.72pc and Hub Power Company 0.82pc, taking away 71 points off the index.

The exploration and production sector saw values recede as international oil prices fell to six-month lows. Apart from PPL, Pakistan Oilfields was down 1.22pc, Mari Petroleum 1.09pc, Attock Petroleum 1.15pc, Hascol Petroleum 1.74pc and Shell Pakistan 1.19pc. The Oil and Gas Development Company, however, defied the trend and rose 0.32pc amid ongoing accumulation on account of its eligibility for the MSCI upgrade.

In addition to UBL, HBL and MCB, other banks whose shares increased were: Bank Alfalah 5pc, Habib Metropolitan Bank 3.08pc, and Faysal Bank 5pc, analysts at Intermarket Securities said.

Steel stocks came back into the limelight with International Steels Ltd going up by 4.99pc, International Industries Ltd 1.24pc, Mughal Stele 2.38pc, Amreli Steels Ltd 3.83pc and Crescent Steel and Allied Products Ltd 3.67pc.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2017