Stocks bust 4-day bash on bargain-hunting

Stocks on Friday busted out of a four-day bash as investors swooped on hot bargains betting the beleaguered incumbent regime won’t botch the Senate job this time, dealers said.

Eventually, later in the day, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf led government’s candidate Sadiq Sanjrani won another term as the Senate chairman securing 48 votes to beat Yousuf Raza Gilani, who could muster 42.

Topline Securities in a note said the Pakistan Stocks Exchange’s KSE-100 index gained 2.36 percent or 1,008.32 points to close at 43,788.08 points on last trading day of the week.

The brokerage attributed the rally to broad-based investor sentiment that government would manage to secure majority vote in senate chairman election.

It said other factors that aided the sentiment were clarity

with respect to proposed amendments in Income Tax Ordinance, where investors felt they might have overplayed some clauses of it.

However the main thing that sparked buying was the attractive valuations.

KSE-30 shares index gained 1.61 percent or 288.17 points to close at 18,149.37 points.

As many as 412 scrips were active of which 321 advanced, 74 declined and 17 remained unchanged.

The ready market volumes increased to 442.56 million shares from 406.1 million on Thursday.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said stocks recovered sharply led by scrips across the board on speculations over positive outcome of Senate chair elections.

Surge in global crude oil market, 20 percent increase in auto sales, 14 percent hike in cement and 13 percent rise in oil sales, rupee recovery led to recovery, Mehanti said.

Major contribution to the index came from Lucky Cement, up 3.15 percent, Hub Power, up 3.3 percent, Habib Bank Limited, up 2.33 percent, Systems Limited, up 5.7 percent, and DG Khan Cement, up 6.8 percent, as they cumulatively contributed 265 points to the index. An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said post clearance of leveraged positions of individual investors, market bounced back. Cement and steel sectors contributed significantly to the surge in index, he said.

Technology stocks, the analyst said, being the subject of leveraged positions, rebounded from session’s low; however, by the end of session selling emerged in tech stocks, which brought the index down from session’s high”.

Besides, excitement of senate elections also had some bearing on the stock market, where a win on government’s part was considered to be a source of confidence for the investors.

Wyeth Pakistan, up Rs70.12 to close at Rs1,005.12/share, and Sapphire Textile, up Rs65.74 to close at Rs987.99/share, were the top two gainers of the day.

Rafhan Maize, down Rs200 to close at Rs9,500/share, and Sunrays Textile down Rs60.25 to end at Rs948/share, suffered most losses.

Unity Foods with 88.25 million traded shares was on top of the volume chart. The scrip gained Rs1.27 to close at Rs26.56/share.

TRG Pakistan was second with 38.84 million shares. It shed 34 paisas to close at Rs119.99/share. Jahangir Siddiqui Company Limited was third with a turnover of 17.73 million shares. It lost Rs1.42 to finish at Rs18.98.