ISLAMABAD, Dec 04 (NNI): The bulls were out of control at the Pakistan Stock Exchange as in the first hour of trading on Monday they went up by 1,136 points tossing the index to well over 62,000 mark.
The buying was robust taking the benchmark KSE-100 index to 62,828, with 63,000 barrier next in line.
The stocks took up their cue from the last trading session when the index had crossed the 61,000 mark with a jump of 1,160 points.
Across-the-board buying was witnessed on Friday with index heavy sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, chemical, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration, OMCs and refinery sector trading in the green.
In November, the KSE-100 had posted a return of 16.6%, the highest after March 2009 (excluding April 2020 return i.e. 16.7% in post-Covid month), brokerage house Arif Habib Limited had said in a note earlier.
The buying spree comes on the back of a staff-level agreement reached between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the first review under the nine-month $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA).
Market experts believe improvement in the country’s financial indicators including improvement in the foreign exchange reserve position and an expected decline in the policy rate is driving the bullish trend.
Volume on the all-share index increased to 531.3 million from 467.1 million a session before. The value of shares rose to Rs21.5 billion on Friday from Rs18.7 billion in the previous session.
Maple Leaf remained the volume leader with 43 million shares, followed by Pak Elektron with 37.8 million shares and Fauji Fert Bin with 27.5 million shares. Shares of 388 companies were traded on Friday, of which 298 registered an increase, 74 recorded a fall, while 16 remained unchanged. NNI
