KARACHI: Bulls emerged as winner of what was a volatile session at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with the indices recovering losses accumulated in early trade to close in the green.
Foreign investors closed the previous session (last of March) as net sellers, registering a net outflow of $44.06 million.
“The CPI (inflation) release for March 2020 matched street consensus at 10.2pc, which gave confidence to the investors that the upcoming number would be even lower, and raised their hopes that yield on fixed instruments, particularly Treasury Bills and Pakistan Investment Bonds, will dip further,” said an analyst at Arif Habib Ltd. “Today’s trading session saw profit booking as well, which kept the overall market range-bound. Perhaps weakness in global equity and commodities market caused investors to rethink their decision.”
The benchmark KSE-100 Index started the session on a negative note, losing 329.55 points to record its intraday low at 28,902.08. However, after a tug of war between bulls and bears, the index jumped to mark its intraday high at 29,691.23 after gaining 459.60 points. The index finally settled higher by 273.94 points at 29,505.57.
Among other indices, the KMI-30 Index accumulated 313.86 points to close at 45,365.52, while the KSE All Share Index gathered 178.59 points, ending at 21,216.41. Of the total traded shares, 193 advanced and 110 declined.
The overall market volumes decreased from 221.83 million in the previous session to 193.47 million, with Maple Leaf Cement Factory Limited (MLCF +1.69pc), Hascol Petroleum Limited (HASCOL +1.82pc) and Unity Foods Limited (UNITY -1.42pc) topping the volume chart. The scripts had exchanged 24.65 million, 17.94 million and 10.23 million shares, respectively.
Sectors that drove the KSE-100 Index north included banking (+46.11 points), automobile assembling (+37.76 points) and textile composite (+36.69 points). Among the companies, Mari Petroleum Company Limited (MARI +35.07 points), Dawood Hercules Corporation Limited (DAWH +34.94 points) and MCB Bank Limited (MCB +24.17 points) added maximum points to the index.
The automobile assembling sector gained 4.58pc in its cumulative market capitalization, with Indus Motor Company Limited (+7.50pc), Pakistan Suzuki Motors Company Limited (PSMC +7.39pc), Honda Atlas Cars (Pakistan) Limited (HCAR +7.49pc) and Sazgar Engineering Works Limited (SAZEW +7.50pc) ending with decent gains.
