KARACHI: Bulls retu­rned with a vengeance on Wednesday to regain all of the 392 points lost a day earlier. After a slow start in the green, the KSE-100 hit intraday high by 468 points and clocked in gains of 412 points, or 0.95 per cent, to close at 43,694.76.

Muffled noise on the political field helped improve investor sentiments while they set aside the worries over the new found cases of Covid-19 variant that originated in the UK. Refineries and technology stocks carried the index higher with Attock Refinery, National Refinery and Pakistan Refinery in the former and TRG, Netsol and Avanceon in the latter witnessing gains in stock prices.

Investors also scurried to accumulate shares in banking, oil and gas marketing companies and textile sector. The government hinted at redoubling efforts to raise textile exports to $20bn in the next five-year through incentives to be announced in the textile policy. Although consolidation was observed in the coal prices month-on-month, it failed to give a boost to the cement stocks. International crude oil prices also traded positive but in a narrow band. Traders said it offered scarce incentive for the investors and the exploration and production stocks.

Foreign investors sold shares worth $0.55m. Banks disposed of stocks worth a huge $10.7m, which appeared to be window-dressing two days before the close of the financial year.

Brokers and insurance companies mopped up much of the liquidity. The traded volume declined 9pc over the previous day to 455.8m shares, while the traded value increased by 8pc to reach $141.4m.

Among scrips, PRL with 55.2m shares was the volume leader. Trading activity was mainly concentrated in the side board stocks where besides PRL, TRG, UNITY, HASCOL, KEL, ANL and FFL cumulatively contributed 166m shares to the total turnover. Scrips that catapulted Index on Tuesday included TRG, Systems, UBL, POL and KTML.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2020