Equity market gains on positive expectation of monetary policy

Equity market gains on positive expectation of monetary policy

KARACHI: The equity market gained 192 points on Thursday on hopes of positive outcome of monetary policy to be announced shortly.

The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 40,800 points as against 40,607 points showing an increase of 192 points.

Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market gained by a good margin today after a lull in the past couple of sessions.

Positive expectation from monetary policy, which is due to be announced today later made the investors take positive bets and bought in good numbers.

For good part of the day, the volume was tilted more in favour of small and mid-caps, however, activity in blue chips started picking pace as result announcements were made for FFC, LUCK, EPCL, all of which were construed to be positive by the investors. Sectors leading the volumes include Technology (WTL), Transport (PIBTL) and Chemical (EPCL).

Sectors contributing to the performance include Pharma (+46 points), Fertilizer (+39 points), O&GMCs (+32 points), Banks (+29 points), Autos (+27 points), Tobacco (-36 points) and E&P (-18 points).

Volumes almost doubled from 125 million shares to 239 million shares (+91 percent DoD).

Average traded value also increased substantially from $35.8 million to $63 million (+76 percent DoD).

Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include PIBTL, WTL, PAEL, EPCL and DCL, which formed 34 percent of total volumes.

Stocks that contributed positively include DAWH (+30 points), SEARL (+21 points), PIBTL (+19 points), POL (+16 points), and FFC (+14 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include PAKT (-36 points), MARI (-26 points), ICI (-10 points), ENGRO (-10 points) and OGDC (-8 points).