KARACHI: Bulls led the way on the trading floor of the Pakistan Stock Exchan­­ge (PSX) on Monday amid across-the-board value buying.

According to Arif Habib Ltd, the PSX’s benchmark index has risen 21.6 per cent in August in dollar terms, which makes the national bourse the best-performing stock market in the world in the first half of the current month.

The investors gained confidence following reports about the expected monetary help from Saudi Arabia as well as the rupee’s continued winning streak against the dollar, it added.

Saudi Arabia is likely to renew a $3 billion deposit with the State Bank of Pakistan to help arrest the constant depletion of foreign reserves. Separately, the oil-rich kingdom is also said to have agreed to extend $100 million a month support for procuring petroleum products for the next 10 months.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 43,621.82 points, up 764.25 points or 1.78pc from a day ago.

The trading volume increased 44.9pc to 541.5m shares while the traded value went up 58.6pc to $78.7m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric Ltd (58.62m shares), Pakistan Refinery Ltd (38.74m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (37.75m shares), Telecard Ltd (32.85m shares) and Cnergyico PK Ltd (32.83m shares).

Sectors contributing to the index performance included banking (234.6 points), cement (96.3 points), technology (67.3 points), fertiliser (40.3 points) and textile composite (33 points).

Companies contributing most positively to the benchmark index were Habib Bank Ltd (82.31 points), Engro Corporation Ltd (40.55 points), Bank AL Habib Ltd (35.4 points), TRG Pakistan Ltd (31.57 points) and Meezan Bank Ltd (31.08 points).

Shares that contributed most negatively to the benchmark index were Fauji Fertiliser Company Ltd (10.48 points), Indus Motor Company Ltd (5.48 points), Pak Suzuki Motor Company Ltd (2.45 points), Honda Atlas Cars Pakistan Ltd (2.32 points) and Archroma Pakistan Ltd (2.06 points).

Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $2.21m.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2022