KARACHI: Bulls reigned supreme on the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Thursday following the announcement by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar about $500 million financing by Asian Infra­structure Investment Bank.

According to Arif Habib Ltd, investors gained considerable confidence because of the promised fund under the Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Exp­en­diture initiative supported by Asian Development Bank.

The session opened in the green zone and kept the bullish momentum throughout trading. The mainboard volumes increased dramatically while third-tier stocks also continued dominating the market.

JS Global said investors should buy stocks in cement, technology and exploration and production sectors.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 42,901.27 points, up 635.91 points or 1.5 per cent from the preceding session.

The trading volume increased 23.8pc to 293.9 million shares while the traded value went up 76.2pc to $46.1m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Hascol Petroleum Ltd (41.5m shares), Bank Alfalah Ltd (21.3m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (16.1m shares), Ghani Global Holdings Ltd (14.1m shares) and Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (12m shares).

Sectors that contributed to the index performance were commercial banking (270 points), technology and communication (117.3 points), exploration and production (83.6 points), power generation and distribution (47.3 points) and cement (22 points).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Rafhan Maize Products Company Ltd (Rs575.99), Allawasaya Textile and Finishing Mills Ltd (Rs230.47), Pakistan Services Ltd (Rs65.70), Ellcot Spinning Mills Ltd (Rs11.73) and Shield Corporation Ltd (Rs10.75).

Foreign investors remained net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $4.75m.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2022