KARACHI: As the bulls continued to rampage on the stock market underpinned by the exuberance over the approaching entry of the KSE-100 index in the MSCI emerging-market index, stocks rallied by nearly 1,100 points, or 2.18 per cent, on Monday to close at their new all-time high 50,936. The index beat the previous best of 50,887 points hit on Jan 27.

Less noticeable was the fact that the Pakistan Stock Exchange also saw an addition of Rs190 billion to its capitalisation which took its aggregate worth past Rs10 trillion for the first time ever.

Monday marked the third consecutive day of a spectacular rally at the stock market. Investor enthusiasm was fuelled by the upgrade of the market to the MSCI emerging-market index in a little over two weeks on June 1.

The index churned an overall volume of 326 million, up from 308m shares traded on Friday. The Monday volume was equal to the 10-day moving average of 324m shares. Traded value rose to Rs20.8bn from Rs18.8bn. Another significant feature of trading was net buying of shares worth $3.30m by foreign investors.

Investors’ interest remained centred on the 27 stocks that are likely to be eligible to be added to the MSCI index. The financial sector saw the three MSCI upgrade hopefuls — Habib Bank Ltd, United Bank Ltd and MCB Bank — spike to hit their ‘upper circuit’.

Adding to that the gains of index heavyweight Oil and Gas Development Company and Lucky Cement, the five MSCI hopefuls added 552 points to the index.

Analysts at Intermarket Securities said that among refineries only National Refinery Ltd rose 2.35pc, outperforming the KSE-100 index, while oil marketing companies underperformed the benchmark index despite a buoyant close.

Cements came into the limelight after announcement of cement despatches figures.

The textile sector continued its winning streak with Nishat Mills Ltd rising by 4.09pc, Nishat Chunian Ltd 2.47pc, Gul Ahmed Textile Mills Ltd 4.98pc and Gadoon Textile Mills Ltd 3.28pc.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2017