KARACHI: The trading at the stock market on Wednesday was characterised by volatile and range-bound activity albeit with heavier volumes. After moving between the intraday high and low by 183 and 107 points, the KSE-100 index settled at 94 points (0.22 per cent) higher at 43,347.

The volume rose 2pc to 223m shares from previous day’s 219 million shares. The traded value improved 6pc to Rs12 billion from Rs11.3bn. Retail favourites Worldcall Telecom and TRG witnessed heaviest turnover of 26m and 24m shares.

“Selling pressure in last 30 minutes of the trading erased half of intraday gains,” noted dealers at Elixir Securities. They expected the market to consolidate and trade range-bound in near-term with index support and resistance defined around 43,000 and 43,700 levels, respectively.

Foreigners were net buyers of $1m worth of stocks. Inflows were concentrated in OMCs ($1.1m), textile ($0.7m) and cement ($0.4m), while E&Ps witnessed outflows of $1.2m.

Top five contributors to index upside were MCB, which rose 2.1pc, UBL 1.5pc, PSO 1.5pc, NML 3.2pc and NRL 4.3pc, adding 107 points, while HBL went down 1.9pc, SNGP 2.6pc, MEBL 4.5pc, OGDC 0.5pc and KEL 2.4pc, eroding 120 points.

On the sector front, cements added 24 points, textiles 21 points as Nishat Mills and Nishat Chunian rallied on expectations of positive export measures announcement in the upcoming ECC meeting. Fertilisers shed 17 points while banks dropped 11 points.

“Cement sector witnessed buying spree as ACPL up 2.36pc, CHCC 1.59pc, DGKC 0.57pc, MLCF 1.70pc and FCCL 1.24pc were among the major gainers from the sector,” dealers at JS Global pointed out.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2017