Pakistan´s KSE ends week on positive note

June 05, 2009
Xinhua

KARACHI: After five consecutive bearish sessions, bulls finally made their way back into the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) Friday as investors adopted buying stance that took market to swell by over 16 points.

Market once again started off the day positively and at one stage hit the intraday highest level of 6,978.49, an increase of 100.35 points, but towards the mid hours it slid into the red territory and hit the intraday lowest level of 6,850.67, before closing in the green bracket.

Market experts are viewing Friday's performance on the back of improved investor confidence where they said that worries regarding tax imposition are now fading away and investors are now willing to take positions ahead of the budget 2009-2010 as most of the scrips are available on attractive levels. They added that market looks all set to make full use of a pre-budget rally where the main index could gain in the range of 500 to 600 points.

It´s important to mention here that Pakistan´s budget for Financial Year 2010 will be announced on June 12.

The benchmark KSE 100-Index advanced by 16.48 points to end the day at 6,894.62, KSE 30-Index inched up by 6.07 points to close at 7,314.11 levels, while KSE All Share Index swelled by 12.08 points to curtail trading activities at 4,953.17 levels here.

Market volumes also showed some improvement Friday as it recorded turnovers of 125,067,500, which are 31,471,640 shares more as compared to Thursday´s volume figures of 93,595,860.

Bulls, somehow, ended bearish rule on the active issues´ chart, where out of 275 traded scrips, prices of 143 equities marched ahead, while 120 lost ground, whereas value of 12 stocks remained unmoved.

Jahangir Siddiqui Company Limited topped the volume leaders' list with a turnover of 19,822,000, followed by Arif Habib Securities and MCB Bank Limited XD with 9,738,800 and 7,820,600 volumes respectively.

According to analysts, support mainly came from buying in the commercial banks, investment banks, cement stocks, and oil and gas exploration sectors that helped KSE put curtails on the weekly trading on a positive note.