KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) experienced positive trading on Monday as investors accumulated high-dividend yield stocks and kept an eye on the ongoing strengthening of the rupee against the dollar.

Arif Habib Ltd said the benchmark KSE-100 index opened in the green zone and maintained that momentum through most of the trading session. It reached an intraday high of 275.06 points after Hub Power Company Ltd announced an unusually high payout that boosted investors’ confidence.

Speculations over the country’s exit from the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list on Oct 17 along with lower inflation for September played the role of a catalyst in the positive close of the index.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 41,211.70 points, up 83.03 points or 0.2pc from the preceding session.

The trading volume decreased 9.9pc to 185.4 million shares while the traded value went down 1.2pc to $41.3m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Hub Power Company Ltd (30.84m shares), TRG Pakistan Ltd (15.99m shares), Habib Bank Ltd (13.16m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (12.35m shares) and Hascol Petroleum Ltd (9m shares).

Sectors that contributed to the index performance were power (136.2 points), technology (30.9 points), oil marketing (19.9 points), vanaspati and allied (10.8 points) and chemical (10.4 points).

Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were Sapphire Fibres Ltd (Rs84.01), Sapphire Textile Mills Ltd (Rs49), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs35.21), Reliance Cotton Spinning Mills Ltd (Rs25.44) and Gatron Industries Ltd (Rs23.40).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Bata Pakistan Ltd (Rs95), Colgate-Palmolive Pakistan Ltd (Rs26.49), EFU Life Assurance Ltd (Rs15.56), Siemens Pakistan Enginee­ring Ltd (Rs14.98) and Pak Suzuki Motor Company Ltd (Rs8.91).

Foreign investors rema­ined net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.69m.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2022