KARACHI: Dramatic ups and downs were seen at the stock market on Friday where the KSE-100 index moved in minutes, in concert with the news flow. The index finally closed with a gain of 287.99 points (0.69 per cent) to settle at 42,004.09.

The market got off on a sluggish note as investors fretted over the ongoing protests on the Supreme Court’s judgement. In the first session, the index hit intraday low by 109 points.

Later in the day, news of eye-popping Chinese financial package of $6 billion resulted in trading terminals hit by an avalanche of buy orders which tossed the index up by 200 points in a matter of minutes. The fiery bulls then continued to charge ahead all the way to take the index to intraday high by 528 points.

At that point, institutional investors in the lead of mutual funds started to liquidate positions and book profit which sent the market down as fast as it had gone up. In the next 30 minutes, all of the gains evaporated, save 30 points.

After days as front-line buyers, mutual funds sold equity worth $7.05 million. Ahead of the closing, individuals - lead buyers of $4.4m - scrambled to take fresh positions, which saw the index recover a lot of lost ground.

The volume improved 19pc to 292m shares while the traded value increased 40pc to Rs13.8bn. While the usual leaders Pak Elektron, Bank of Punjab, TRG Pakistan, Pakistan Interna­tional Bulk Terminal and Fauji Cement contributed 34pc to the total volume, brisk trading was also seen in some of the heavy-weight stocks, such as Oil and Gas Development Company, Pakistan Petroleum and DG Khan Cement.

Among scrips, gainers were led by United Bank, up 3.74pc, Habib Bank 1.84pc, Lucky Cement 2.25pc, Eng­ro Corporation 1.37pc and DG Khan Cement 5pc, adding 182 points. On the flip side, Pakistan Petroleum, down 2.68pc, Mari Petro­leum 4.09pc and Pakistan Oilfields 1.54pc scrapped 113 points.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2018