Stocks make marginal gain in narrow range trading

Stocks make marginal gain in narrow range trading

KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) made a marginal gain on Tuesday while trading in narrow range. The benchmark KSE-100 Index closed at 47,687 points as against previous day’s closing of 47,673 points, showing an increase of 14 points.

Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market traded narrow range today, oscillating between -56 points and +237 points.

The investors were anticipating monetary tightening. Resultantly, Banking sector stocks moved up, particularly MCB, HBL and UBL.

Technology sector on the other hand saw profit booking after making an uptick in the past couple of sessions. Similar activity was witnessed in Textile sector. Cement, O&GMCs and E&P sectors saw selling activity that brought the prices below LDCPs. Among scrips, WTL led the table with 36.6 million shares, followed by BYCO (34.2 million) and KASBM (17.8 million).

Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (+119 points), Textile (+40 points), Fertilizer (+29 points), O&GMCs (-43 points), Inv Banks (-35 points) and Cement (-32 points).

Volumes declined from 450.2 million shares to 432.6 million shares (-4 per cent DoD). Average traded value increased by 3 per cent to reach US$ 86.3 million as against US$ 84.2 million.

Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include WTL, BYCO, KASBM, TPL and ASC, which formed 28 per cent of total volumes.

Stocks that contributed positively to the index include HBL (+44 points), KTML (+30 points), SYS (+30 points), UBL (+27 points) and MCB (+25 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include DAWH (-37 points), PSO (-27 points), TRG (-22 points), NRL (-14 points) and COLG (-12 points).