By By our correspondent
The KSE 100 Index managed to gain 55.17 points to close at 9,306.36 points while the KSE 30 index closed at 9,825.9 with a gain of 51.03 points. Market Capitalization increased to Rs2.686 trillion as compare to Rs2.671 trillion in the previous session.
“Foreign inflows during the week convinced investors to remain on the buy side,” analyst Furqan Punjani said adding, “news regarding earlier than expected commencement of additional oil and gas from Nashpa pulled E&P stock prices higher.”
Speculation of Warid and Telenor deal again attracted investor’s attention in Bank Alfalah, which stood as volume leader in Friday’s session. Trading activity though still low was susbstantially better than last session as ready market volume increased to 140.320 million shares from 108.204 million shares traded a day earlier. Future market volume declined to 2.445 million shares as compared to 3.06 million shares in the last trading session.
Ahsan Mehnti CEO of Shehzad Chamdia Securities said that positive activity witnessed on continued foreign interest in Oil and Gas exploration sector.
Another reason, which triggered buying is the expectation of reduction in discount rate in next monetary policy announcement in end of this month, early introduction of leverage products in the market and stronger valuations impact in the Telecom sector played a catalyst role in positive activity at KSE.
Clarification regarding depleting gas output from OGDC Qadirpur gas field did infuse confidence amongst the local participants, while nervousness regarding decline in revenues and payout ratios, that have been quite prominent in couple of quarterly announcements, persisted.
Declining trend in upcoming quarter might reduce the valuations of the state owned enterprises bonds as compared to previous years, nevertheless unprecedented dollar inflow from previous sessions mainly in OGDC, did invite cautious accumulation by local corporate participants in Oil and Gas exploration and marketing stocks, thus allowing benchmark to sustain positivism.
Unconfirmed news of the strategic holding of Bank Alfalah that would bring capital gain for the bank invited interest in the undervalued stock of the banking sector.
High activity due to pinch of rumours regarding sponsors interest in the stock, not only placed the bank on top of the volume leaders the activity had a positive impact on other stocks of the sector as well.
Accumulation continued in low priced stocks and stocks offering consistent double digit dividend yields along with growth revenue stream, besides leading textile sector stocks, those have been in lime light from previous sessions, activity although failed to invite high turnover due to obvious reasons, it did improve the sentiment that has been on lower side due to various reasons stated Hasnain Asghar Ali analyst of Aziz Fida Husein & Co Ltd.
Bank Alfalah was the volume leader with 33.46 million shares closed at Rs14.27 up by 96 paisa, followed by PTCLA with 10.476 million shares closed at Rs18.22 with a gain of 20 paisa, Pak PTA Ltd with 6.78 million shares closed at Rs7.62 with a loss of 5 paisa, OGDC with 6.41 million shares closed at Rs110.98 with gain of Rs1.64, Pace Pak Ltd with 6.33 million shares closed at Rs6 up by 20 paisa.