KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange had a positive session on Wednesday even though investors opted for profit-taking in the first trading hour.

Arif Habib Ltd said the banking sector remained in the limelight owing to major results’ announcements. Value buying was observed in the last trading hour, which led the index to close in the green zone.

According to JS Global, the upcoming monetary policy and the board meeting of the International Monetary Fund will remain key driving forces for the market going forward.

“We recommend investors should adopt a buy-on-dips strategy in technology, exploration and production and cement sectors,” it said.

The top performer in terms of absolute increase in the share price was Systems Ltd. The company also announced in a stock notice that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100 per cent of TreeHouse Consultancy, a high-end IT solutions provider, along with its subsidiaries and associated companies.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 43,676.56 points, up 240.08 points or 0.55pc from a day ago.

The trading volume increased 17.4pc to 608 million shares while the traded value went down 31.4pc to $51.8m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric Ltd (209m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (53.2m shares), Hascol Petroleum Ltd (48.29m shares), Pakistan International Airlines Ltd (17.43m shares) and Flying Cement Ltd (15.89m shares).

Sectors contributing to the index performance included technology (116.2 points), cement (97.2 points), power (38.1 points), engineering (16.1 points) and fertiliser (13.6 points).

Companies contributing most positively to the benchmark index were Systems Ltd (90.66 points), Lucky Cement Ltd (53.05 points), K-Electric Ltd (30.15 points), Meezan Bank Ltd (18.49 points) and Lotte Chemical Pakistan Ltd (15.19 points).

Shares that contributed most negatively to the benchmark index were National Bank of Pakistan Ltd (32.05 points), Pakistan Oilfields Ltd (14.87 points), Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (11.96 points), MCB Bank Ltd (10.11 points) and Habib Bank Ltd (10.06 points).

Foreign investors were net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.43m.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2022