KARACHI - Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) continued its upward trajectory on Thursday as the benchmark 100-share index gained another 858 points and closed at 46,332 points.
All sectors contributed to the positive trend with commercial bank heavyweights cumulatively contributing 217 points to KSE 100-index. HBL (up 2.81%), UBL (0.97%) and MCB (1.98%) were the major contributors from the aforementioned sector. LUCK (up 4.27%) and NML (5.00%) closed higher than their previous day close on the back of news that three companies have received approval to set up car assembly plants, which include Lucky Cement, United Motors and Nishat Group. ASTL (up 5.00%) gained to close on its upper circuit on back of news that NTC imposed definitive anti-dumping duty of 24.04% on CC billets imported from China for a period of five years, observed analyst Arhum Ghous. Investor interest was witnessed in the cement sector where CHCC (up 4.35%), LUCK (4.27%) and MLCF (2.25%) were among the stocks that closed in the green zone.
Stocks showed major recovery at PSX led by selected scrips across the board on strong earnings outlook and $2bn strong FDI data for Jul-May'17. Foreign inflows, government development commitments in federal budgets and subdued noise over JIT panama case ahead of Eid Holidays played a catalyst role in major recovery at PSX ignoring slump in global crude prices on oversupply, stated analyst Ahsan Mehanti.
Traded volume decreased to 295m shares, compared to 346m shares of the previous day while trade value also decreased to Rs13.3bn/ US$127mn.
K-Electric emerged as volume leader with 68 mn traded shares, while TRG Pak with 15mn shares and Bank of Punjab with 14.8mn traded shares were in spotlight in the market.
Scrips of total 383 active companies were participated in the session of which 259 finished in positive, 106 in negative while 18 remained unchanged.