Stock market gains 262 points despite early day losses

Stock market gains 262 points despite early day losses

KARACHI: The stock exchange gained 262 points on Monday after making recovery from early day losses.

The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 41,069 points as against 40,807 points showing an increase 262 points.

Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market opened on a negative note with -24 points and slipped a total of 137 points during the session, before Banking sector took the front seat and drove the index to recover the intra-day loss and put together an increase of 308 points. The index closed +262 points.

MSCI semi-annual index review changes, which were made earlier in the month, had today as the effective date. Resultantly, MCB among banking sector and OGDC, PPL among E&P sector saw brisk activity.

PSO also reacted to the prospect of share swap arrangement as proposed by the Petroleum Division to settle Circular debt among public sector entities in the energy chain.

Although, international crude oil prices were down on the concerns of OPEC+ meeting scheduled for tomorrow, where deferment of oil supply till Q1, 2021 will be taken.

Among scrips, HUMNL topped the volumes with 88.5 million shares, followed by TRG (31.7 million) and PRL (24.7 million).

Sectors contributing to the performance include Technology (+57 points), Banks (+50 points), O&GMCs (+48 points), Cement (+36 points) and E&P (+25 points).

Volumes declined from 397.8 million shares to 388.6 million shares (-2 percent DoD). Average traded value however, increased by 7 percent to reach US$ 88.2 million as against US$ 82.5 million.

Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include HUMNL, TRG, PRL, KEL and UNITY, which formed 47 percent of total volumes.

Stocks that contributed positively to the index include TRG (+49 points), PSO (+39 points), MCB (+22 points), UBL (+20 points) and LUCK (+20 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include BAHL (-16 points), ENGRO (-16 points), PAKT (-11 points), FFC (-11 points) and KEL (-7 points).