KARACHI: Positive sentiments took hold of the trading floor at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Thursday as the benchmark index traded in the green zone throughout the session.

Arif Habib Ltd said investors opted for value hunting across the board with a rally in the IT sector. IT exports surged to $2.6 billion in 2021-22. Investors’ participation remained healthy as hefty volumes were witnessed in main-board as well as third-tier stocks.

Investors welcomed the statement by Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on the expected sale of minority stakes in state-owned enterprises to a friendly country under a repo arrangement — a move that’s going to help bridge Pakistan’s financing gap of $4bn.

Investors remained upb­eat partly as they anticipated a lower current account deficit for the outgoing month, said JS Global.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 40,276.64 points, up 304 points or 0.76pc from a day ago.

The trading volume incre­ased 106.7pc to 251.3 million shares while the traded value went up 125.3pc to $39m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom Ltd (32.61m shares), TPL Properties Ltd (20.37m shares), Lotte Chemical Pak­i­s­tan Ltd (16.95m shares), TRG Pakistan Ltd (10.77m shares) and Cnergyico PK Ltd (10.22m shares).

Sectors contributing to the index performance included banking (154.1 points), technology (93.3 points), exploration and production (64.9 points), power (24.7 points) and oil marketing (18.5 points).

Stocks that contributed most positively to the index were TRG Pakistan Ltd (54.41 points), MCB Bank Ltd (40.1 points), Habib Bank Ltd (37.22 points), Bank AL Habib Ltd (36.29 points) and Pakistan Oilfields Ltd (34.91 points).

Shares that took away the highest number of points from the index were Engro Fertilisers Ltd (55.37 points), Indus Motor Company Ltd (25.91 points), Engro Poly­mer and Chemicals Ltd (20.96 points), Engro Corpor­ation Ltd (15.04 points) and Millat Tractors Ltd (4.79 points).

Foreign investors were net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.32m.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2022