KARACHI: Despite an initially bullish start, the stock market turned in a flat performance on Friday, hitting an intraday record high above 80,000 amid wild swings in the last session of the outgoing short week.

Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks closed flat amid consolidation in the overbought market.

He added that banking and energy sector scrips outperformed during futures rollover, and speculations over an IMF bailout deal to avoid sovereign debt default helped the index close at a new record.

Topline Securities Ltd Chief Executive Officer Mohammed Sohail said the positive sentiments were led by the tax-laden 2024-25 budget, which investors feel will help secure a new long-term IMF loan.

He said the index crossed 80,000 in intraday trade, compared to 40,000 a year ago, showing a robust increase of 100pc.

Hub Power, United Bank, Habib Bank, Fauji Fertiliser, and Pakistan Tobacco made a major positive contribution to the index, cumulatively adding 630 points. Conversely, Meezan Bank, Lucky Cement, Engro Fertiliser, Engro Corporation and Systems Ltd shaved off 398 points.

As a result, the benchmark index hit an intraday record at 80,059.87 points and a low of 78,169.03. However, the index settled at a new peak of 78,810.49 after posting a paltry gain of 8.96 points or 0.01pc on a day-on-day basis.

The overall trading volume inched up 4.13pc to 471.34 million shares. However, the traded value fell by 0.96pc to Rs20.47bn on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom (43.05m shares), Hum Network (41.92m sha­­­­res), Pervez Consul­ta­ncy Company (37.35m sha­res), Silkbank Ltd (18.11m shares) and The Hub Power (17.94m shares).

The shares registering the most significant incre­ases in their share prices in absolute terms were Pakistan Tobacco Comp­any (Rs75.60), Meh­mood Textile (Rs40.83), Pakis­tan Hotels Developers Ltd (Rs37.96), Sapphire Fibres Ltd (Rs33.33) and Ibrahim Fibres (Rs31.16).

The companies registering significant decreases in their share prices in ab­­solute terms were Ismail Industries (Rs103.78), Mari Petroleum (Rs46.27), Lucky Cement (Rs33.63), Service Industries (Rs24.58) and Premium Textile (Rs20.37).

Foreign investors turned net buyers as they purcha­sed shares worth $2.64m.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2024