KARACHI: Share prices continued their upward trend on Thursday from a day ago as positive triggers led investors to hunt for value stocks.

Arif Habib Ltd said an increase in the margins of oil marketing companies resulted in higher participation from investors.

The index opened in the positive territory and made an intraday high of 309.76 points as investors opted for value angling in mainboard stocks. Healthy volumes were recorded across the board whereas third-tier stocks remained volume leaders.

The index rose despite the increase in secondary market yields on government debt instruments as well as rising prices of international commodities in the initial hours of trading, said Topline Securities. However, the positive trend couldn’t continue and gave way to some profit-taking in the second half.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 42,393.52 points, up 44.89 points or 0.11 per cent from the preceding session.

The trading volume increased 34.6pc to 161.8m shares while the traded value went up 0.8pc to $21m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom Ltd (15.3m shares), Hascol Petroleum Ltd (12.1m shares), Ghani Chemical Industries Ltd (7.8m shares), Nishat Chunian Power Ltd (6.6m shares) and Habib Bank Ltd (5.4m shares).

Sectors that contributed to the index performance were commercial banking (73.5 points), miscellaneous (25.7 points), power generation and distribution (19.8 points), oil and gas marketing (10.6 points) and fertiliser (5.6 points).

Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were Pakistan Services Ltd (Rs46.91), the Thal Industries Corporation Ltd (Rs14), Siemens Pakistan Engineering Ltd (Rs10), Fazal Cloth Mills Ltd (Rs7.93) and Khyber Tobacco Company Ltd (Rs7.05).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Rafhan Maize Products Company Ltd (Rs824.25), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs51.67), Nestle Pakistan Ltd (Rs50), Gatron Industries Ltd (Rs17.05) and Indus Motor Company Ltd (Rs13.72).

Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.13m.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2022