KARACHI: The stock market gained 328 points on Wednesday despite ongoing court proceedings related to tenure extension of the army chief.
The benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 38,123 points as against 37,795 points showing an increase of +328 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the political uncertainty took center stage since yesterday, when SC took notice of Army Chief’s extension.
Considering this issue to be a procedural issue, which will be resolved by the government, market took a positive view of the situation and partly recovered points lost in yesterday’s trading.
All in all, the index gained 311 points during the session, and closed the session at +328 points.
Session did saw a loss of 123 points as the remarks by SC judges came in public, denting investor sentiment for a while.
Buying activity was largely observed in Steel and Cement sectors, wherein Steel and Auto sector scrips hit upper circuits.
Cement sector led the volumes with 49.7 million shares, followed by Vanaspati (24 million) and Food (23.5 million) repeating yesterday’s performance.
Among scrips, 2 of the top volume leaders were UNITY (24 million) and FFL (19.9 million) followed by MLCF (15.3 million) which closed at upper circuit.
Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (+132 points), Power (+31 points), Tobacco (+31 points), Fertilizer (+22 points), and Autos (+14 points).
Volumes declined significantly by 53 percent to reach 228.1 million shares against 488.7 million shares. Average traded value also declined by 57 percent to reach US$ 51.5 million as against US$ 118.5 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITY, FFL, MLCF, MLCFR1 and PAEL, which formed 37 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively include MCB (+53 points), FFC (+39 points), PAKT (+32 points), HUBC (+30 points) and HBL (+28 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include ENGRO (-19 points), PPL (-13 points), MARI (-12 points), COLG (-9 points), and EFERT (-4 points).
